Lifestyle Headshots for deborahannphotography!

This post is about so much more than just showing you some beautiful photos of my beautiful friend Debbie. This post is the epitome of what celebrating in each other's success, joining in community with those who others might think you should be in competition with, and partnering instead of tearing each other down is all about! 

I have been richly blessed to know Debbie these past few months. God brought us together through a shootsac and we have become great friends. She has opened up my world to New Jersey and I have opened her world up to many new and exciting things including Squarespace and Photomechanic!! 

Debbie wanted to show me a few of her favorite places to shoot and I was totally down because I needed some great locations in my back pocket and the places she showed me did NOT disappoint. Despite the COLD and the fact that everything was brown and dried up, everywhere we went was still pretty amazingly gorgeous!! 

We decided to have some fun and photograph each other while we were out and about for some new headshots and well...to have fun! Because that is what we photographers do! 

Despite Debbie's hesitation and nervousness about being photographed, I think you can tell from the below photos that she actually had a pretty good time!! She spun around and everything!! 

She is a gorgeous woman and child of God and the light within her radiates so beautifully. She is an amazing person and I am utterly blessed to know her and call her a friend! 

How one off the cuff sentence turned into my new headshots

During my time at WPPI last week, while I was sitting in on Katelyns talk about "dueling identities" and marketing she made the smallest side comment while discussing branding that hit me like a ton of bricks. Funny how that happens isn't it? I guarantee a good chunk of people in the room might have even missed what she said, but I honed in on it with laser like focus and I have no idea why. It was just a little comment mixed into the bigger fray of her talk but the fact that she said it is the whole reason I am even writing this post. 

That's why I love teaching. You have such an awesome platform to impact peoples lives in ways that you often don't even expect! 

She was talking about having consistent branded images of yourself on all of your social media platforms. I have known that this is something I want to do for a while now and I totally get the importance of it. When people visit your various sites its important for them to see YOU and to see a consistent version of YOU. 

For a few weeks I had been wrestling with the idea of doing this. While I don't mind being in front of the camera, I don't necessarily LOVE the way I look and don't feel very fancy most of the time. I wasn't sure how to go about getting headshots and taking them myself would be far too difficult. I was feeling a little stuck and like I might have to wait to do all of this until after we move. 

But then Katelyn was talking about some of her new shots she utilized when she recently updated her brand and she said something along these lines, "it doesn't have to be a big production...Michael took these of me out in front of our garage one afternoon." 

Lightbulb moment. 

Paul can take them. Why not? I've taught him the ins and outs of the camera. Even though he doesn't spend near the amount of time geeking out about all things photography as I do, I can still set him up and he can totally do this for me! 

Even better, I had a hair appointment scheduled this week!! Yeeawwww! 

We did some practice shots during the weekend and then on Monday after my hair was all blown out and gorgeous (Esthela you are the best!!) he took some more of me. These were mostly all done in our backyard literally right outside the back door by our bedroom. 

The photos towards the bottom were our "practice" photos which is why my hair is different. But I kind of like all of them and I plan on using a variety of these images all throughout my social media. 

It is so important for potential clients to get a consistent image of you wherever you are online and I really feel like this is a big step forward in that direction.