Personal brand photography

The session is planned backwards from where the pictures will be used. Before the day, the photographer reads your website and profiles and asks what you are launching, then builds a shot list: a wide portrait for a homepage header, tighter portraits for profiles, you at a laptop or with a notebook, you teaching or talking, and close details of your hands, tools and products. Thirty minutes covers one setting and one look. A café or coworking space in Palermo, a bookshop in Recoleta, a cobbled street in San Telmo, a terrace in Córdoba or a vineyard in Mendoza are typical settings, and every private business among them needs to agree to the camera first.

Light and season decide the hours. The first or last two hours of daylight keep skin even and backgrounds soft; a December afternoon in Buenos Aires is hot and humid, while from June to August a coat may have to appear in the pictures. Bring one outfit in a solid colour that fits your brand. If any picture is meant for paid advertising, a book cover or a product sold by someone else, agree that use in writing before the session, and get a signed release from any client or colleague who appears, since article 53 of the Código Civil y Comercial requires consent to reproduce a person’s image.

This is not a headshot session. A headshot is a tight portrait for a profile, made at an office against a plain or blurred background. Personal brand photography, in the same 30 minutes, is a set of scenes, and its value is the range of situations rather than the one perfect face. A second location, an outfit change or a longer session can be added and is quoted in writing. If you need social video as well as stills, the social media content service adds short vertical clips from the same morning.