Personal branding headshots west coast style

Photo of professional female diver and filmmaker Rebecca Pratt at the beach. Photo by Laura Sosner.

There’s no doubt about it- personal branding photography is here to stay. This style of headshots is a trend that has been soaring in popularity in recent years, though it is still perhaps a bit of an industry term. What is personal branding? Essentially it’s the art of defining and promoting your identity for business purposes (and is especially important if you are your business like many entrepreneurs/small business owners are). And personal branding photography is an extension of that- photography (often headshots) that reflects your brand.

Photo of a young woman in diving gear on a rocky west coast beach in Vancouver.

And those are really the only parameters for personal branding imagery. The sky’s the limit in terms of what personal branding photography can look like. It could be a realtor photographed in a beautiful home. It might be a high-powered CEO photographed in their office. Or it could be a professional diver photographed at the beach as in the photos here.

I am always excited when a request for a personal branding session comes in because it requires the client and I to really work together and coordinate a cohesive vision for their shoot beforehand. It’s also usually a fun challenge, particularly when a personal branding shoot takes me on-location (something I received more and more requests for in 2022 and predict will continue into 2023).

Which leads me to this shoot I did at the tail end of 2022 for filmmaker, producer, and diver Rebecca Pratt. Rebecca had reached out to me with a very clear vision of what she wanted- specifically 3 on-location photos at the beach in her diving gear that she could use for upcoming marketing materials and press releases. While I was confident we could do something great for her, for this shoot we did face a couple of challenges, one of them being that Rebecca was in Vancouver for a short window of time before she had to go onto the Yukon for a documentary she’s working on. I was also a wee bit nervous given the weather that Vancouver is notorious for when we were doing this particular shoot, and rescheduling was not an option. But luck was on our side. It was raining the morning of the shoot, but we got a break in the rain when we arrived on-site, and these photos are the result.

Interested in booking your own personal branding photo shoot? Get in touch today to start the ball rolling.