Clare Forestier contacted me during the summer to help out with her rebrand. She had been working with a team of people including Belinda Furneaux -Harris a branding consultant https://brandedandunstoppable.com/brand-consultancy and web designer Vik Martin https://thewpnurse.com/ - the A team!

What excited me about this particular shoot was Claire had two roles she wanted to promote - her daytime job as a coach helping people for public speaking and a nighttime gig as an Emcee - hosting events. This allowed me to use different types of lighting for different moods. So first things first we set about finding a suitable venue for the shoot - we were looking for a space that would give us options and would be local to us both in Bristol. We were also looking for somewhere where we could shoot outside and had an aspirational feel to it.

There is an area of Bristol called Clifton which is an exclusive area to live and is known for its grand Georgian architecture, so this would be a good starting point. And in the end we settled on the Square Club in Berkely Square, a popular meeting and shared office space. A quick site visit meant I was able to plan out the shoot well in advance. The area we selected had a nice brick wall, dark wood flooring and a window seat space. Outside was the Georgian architecture we wanted , not too many parked cars and a lovely private park with large trees and shrubs - it ticked all the boxes!

Ok next up was my favourite part - deciding on the styling!

As Claire had a beautifully designed and thought-out branding document this bit was pretty seamless - we had the Pantone numbers for the exact brand colours - pink and green and a good description of how the branding photographs might look. So after a quick 15-minute zoom call we were set to go. Oh and props wise we went for a couple of funky-looking microphone, a laptop for zoom calls and a ring light to be used with my camera to simulate a webcam.

I knew time would be tight on the shoot - we only had the room for 3 hours, so my assistant and I decided on keeping to a simple one-light setup plus bounce so we could easily move around and be adaptable. On the day it was a bright and sunny summer’s day so I knew we would be fine shooting outside, so that was taken care of!

We started off with some action shots - I have found that this a great way to get your client/talent/sitter to warm up and settle into the shoot.

Note to photographers!

The image on the laptop was dropped in using Photoshop. I knew we were going to do this so I made sure that Claire was wearing the same dress as the original zoom call! Nobody will probably notice that but if I hadn’t bothered sorting it beforehand it would have really annoyed me! Another styling note - make sure you have coffee or whatever in the mug. Shooting at this angle ie downwards means you can see the content of the cup.

The third photograph is using my assistant Carlos! We used a large 6 x 4 ft reflector to bounce light back into the scene. As I was using a 35mm lens in this case, there is a tendency for Claire to look small - wide angle distortion. So I got her to sit on a cushion to raise her up and give her more gravitas in the frame.

Of course lots of choices of headshots for profile photographs using my signature grey background and the brick wall in the space. Lovely soft light using a very large diffused light source.

The above are the branded photographs that represent the nighttime activity - the Emcee part! So scope for something a bit more dramatic. Still incorporating the brand colours as written out in the brand guidelines. The first image was shot during the day but using a bit of camera/lighting trickery we made it look it was shot at a nighttime event.

Photographers note - lighting wise this was photographed using a large beauty dish with a grid on it to contain the spill. As it was taken in a public part of the building I got my assistant ( who is quite tall) to hand-hold the light and point it in the right direction.

Clare definitely did moody well and the black and white shot is one of my favourites - and could be the perfect photograph for the right blog or article.

And finally, we step outside and it’s super bright! Which can be a bit of a nightmare for photographers, but after years of shooting in LA (sunny everyday!) I know what needs to be done. Either put the sun behind the subject - backlit or seek out shade and use a reflector to bounce back some light into the subject’s eyes.

So there we have it another satisfied personal branding client with about 50 images delivered all edited and retouched where necessary and you can see the final images here : https://clareforestier.com/