Nina turned up at the studio with her hair and makeup done, a bag full of gymwear and a mood board she had put together herself. With that much preparation, half my job was done before I picked up the camera. This was a personal branding shoot for her social media, and it is the latest in a run of sessions we have done together over the last few years.
Working with Nina again
Nina is a fitness instructor based in Ipswich, and you can find her coaching work on Instagram at @nina_doucette_coaching. She practises what she preaches. She is strong, healthy and clearly lives the lifestyle she coaches, which matters when your face and your body are the advert for your business. Her clients need to trust that she knows what she is talking about, and her images have to back that up without looking staged.
We have worked together enough times now that the shoot has a rhythm to it. Nina knows how I work, I know what she needs, and the time we would once have spent getting comfortable with each other goes straight into the pictures instead.
Starting from a mood board
Nina sent over a mood board before the shoot, and I wish more clients did the same. A handful of guide images gives the session a direction and a feel before anyone walks into the studio. It removes the guesswork. I am not standing there on the day trying to read a client’s mind, and they are not hoping I have somehow understood a look they have never described out loud.
I want to be clear about what a mood board is for. The images on it are inspiration only. We do not copy them, and they are not used as a template to recreate shot for shot. They tell me the mood, the lighting and the general look Nina was after, and from there the pictures are ours. It is a really nice way to work, and it means the client gets what they actually need rather than something I made up on the day.
Hair, makeup and a bag full of gymwear
Nina did her own hair and makeup and brought all of her outfits, every one of them gymwear. There were black crop tops, red shorts, a navy set, a long-sleeved black top and a white set that we saved for the end of the session. For a fitness instructor, that is exactly the right wardrobe. Her followers want to see her in the clothes she trains in, not in something she would never wear to a class.
For anyone booking a personal branding session, my advice is to bring more outfits than you think you need. A few too many is always better than a few too few. Choice is what clients need at the end of the day, and you cannot add an outfit after the shoot is over.
Same poses, different outfits
A good number of outfits also makes the posing easier. Once we find a set of poses that work, we can run through them again in each new outfit. Nina does not have to keep inventing something new every time she changes, and I can guide her through what works and what does not. On this shoot that meant a weight bench and a pair of hex dumbbells, with Nina seated, leaning, curling and resting on the bench, then standing shots with arms folded or stretched overhead.
Personal branding is about the person, so the images cannot look so posed that they feel false. I like to keep people moving. Nina also needed variety for a practical reason. Many of these images will have text added later, or will sit behind an announcement about a class or a programme, so she needs a selection with space in the frame and a range of moods to choose from.
Shooting tethered and building confidence
Even someone who coaches fitness for a living can lose confidence in front of the camera. It happens to almost everyone at some point, and it is my job to build people back up and help them feel good about themselves. I think that matters as much as the lighting.
In the studio I shoot tethered, so the images appear on a monitor at the back of the room as I take them. Most of the time that helps. Clients often struggle to picture the finished result in their heads, and it is hard for me to explain what the edit will look like afterwards. Seeing the pictures come in gives them something real to look at.
It can be a double-edged sword. When someone starts the session feeling low, they look at the screen and go straight to the thing they do not like, because that is all their mind is focused on. I have to judge, client by client, whether seeing every frame is helping or holding them back.
Keeping people moving helps here too. When I am shooting a sequence, the images load up quickly one after another, and it is very hard for anyone to fix on a single frame before the next one replaces it. The monitor is still there when we want it, though. It gives us a natural place to stop, look at an image together and check that we are getting what the client wants and heading in the right direction. That balance works brilliantly for me.
Dark and moody, with a lighter finish
Nina wanted quite a dark look for this set, which suits the way I like to shoot. Most of the session was on a dark, mottled grey backdrop with the light falling across her and dropping away into shadow, which shows muscle tone and shape without needing to shout about it.
Towards the end we tried something lighter. Nina changed into her white gym outfit, and we put her on a very light grey background. It gave her a completely different set of images from the same afternoon, cleaner and brighter, and they sit really well alongside the darker frames. I am glad we tried it.
A natural edit, not a heavy one
The edit for a personal branding session is my standard edit. That means colour correction, a slight adjustment and a few tweaks in my developing software. It is not a heavy retouch. I want people to look natural and clean, like themselves on a good day, because these images are going to sit next to the real person in every class and every video they post. Anything beyond that standard edit is available, and it is charged as extra.
Personal branding photography in Suffolk
I photograph personal branding sessions at my studio at Base Business Park in Rendlesham, on the former RAF Bentwaters site near Woodbridge. It is an easy drive from Ipswich, and I work with business owners, coaches and instructors from across Suffolk and East Anglia. If you are a fitness professional who needs images that look like you and work hard on social media, I would be happy to talk through what you have in mind.
