Boise Branding Photographer for Keynote Speakers | Authentic Brand Session with Edie

I’m a big believer in personal brands and small businesses. Of course I am, it’s what I’ve been building for the last 20 years working as a photographer. For me what it’s really about is the alignment of who I am and what my “work” is (by work I just mean what I get paid for).

We spend so many hours of our lives “working” and for me I’ve had to have those working hours spent on something that matters to me beyond just making money, something bigger and deeper. So while I’m of course a photographer, the bigger, deeper piece for me is people. Take photos of real people that represent who they really are and help empower them to do their work in the world.

From our very first meeting I loved talking with Edie, a keynote speaker in Boise. I could instantly tell she was really passionate about her work and a deeply caring person. She was re-launching a website for her keynote speaking business and she wanted authentic photos for her website re-launch, social media and all of her platforms for marketing her business.

We planned around getting Edie lots of variation in her photos, which is what most of my clients want, because it gives them the most usefulness from their photos and it makes one photoshoot actually look like multiple photoshoots. The best way to create variation on photoshoots is through different locations, multiple wardrobes and using different types of lighting and we took advantage of all of these things on Edie’s half day branding photoshoot.

In our pre-production process Edie had shown me a sample from Brene Brown that was done in studio and in talking through her brand style and aesthetic we decided that Boise Urban Studio was the perfect location for her photoshoot. It gave us awesome natural light options, lots of varied backdrops, options for both lifestyle and studio type photography, and then it’s right in Downtown Boise, so towards the end of her photoshoot we walked around downtown to bring in a really different look.

I’ll let the photos tell the rest of the story here, but it was such a pleasure to work with and get to know Edie and I love seeing how she’s already put the photos to use on her website which you can see by clicking here. Also if you’re in need of a branding photoshoot click here and let’s brainstorm and see if I could be a good fit, I absolutely love doing these photoshoots.

Let’s start with a few of my favorites:

These first photos are all taken with natural light in Boise Urban Studio. You can see how much variation we can get even with natural light. I use several different studios in town, depending on the look I want to get for a client, but Boise Urban Studio takes the cake when it comes to natural light. The studio is located in downtown Boise on 8th street, it’s on the second story of the Idaho Building and the light there is so pretty, my clients and I always talk about how great it is.

The image below is vertical, I always take a variety of horizontal and vertical images for different use cases for my clients. The devices we use for viewing content on the internet want two different formats of images, phones want vertical images and computers want horizontal, so the best solution for making photography work really useful is taking both horizontal and vertical images.

We also did some lifestyle photos of Edie working at a desk, lifestyle content mixes in nicely with other content when you’re building a website or marketing on social media platforms, it offers variation and I also find it’s nice for clients to be able to just take some normal actions like working during a photoshoot, a bit of a break from posing. Again still using all natural light here, in a different room of the studio, and we intentionally styled this desk:

Leaning again into variation I got out my lights and used a black savage paper background to create a really different look for a in studio headshot type photo.

One of our goals was to create photos that looked like Edie was actually speaking on stage and doing a keynote speech. I tried calling different places in Boise to find a stage we could use, but because we did the photoshoot on a Friday night, every place had an event going on. I knew we could recreate a similar look using a projector and that’s the route we decided to take, so we did this photo in the studio but made it look like she was speaking on stage, I think it worked pretty well.

I always love the challenge of finding ways to make things look different while still being in the same space.

We spent most of our time in the studio, but for the last little bit we went out into downtown Boise and took some photos in and around Freak Alley as well as in front of one of my favorite wooden walls in Boise. One thing I appreciate about Boise is how much variation we can get in one location.

Here’s a few screenshots of Edie’s website, www.ediekay.com, so you can see how she used her branding photos on her website. My very favorite thing is seeing clients use their photos for their businesses and brands, and it makes me so happy to see Edie using her photos all over her website.

Thank you so much Edie for trusting me with this project, so great working with you! If you’re in need of branding photos for your personal brand, contact me by clicking here and let’s start the conversation.