Personal branding
Personal Branding Photography in Naperville and Chicago
Personal branding photography produces a library rather than a portrait: several looks, several settings, and images built for a website, a press page, social profiles and marketing. Kay Choi plans each session around the audience you are trying to reach. The Branding Collection is one hour and ten retouched images, from $500.
How is this different from a headshot?
A headshot answers one question — what do you look like. A branding session answers a longer one: what do you do, how do you do it, and why should someone choose you over the person whose website loaded before yours.
Practically, that means more than one photograph and more than one kind of photograph. A single sitting produces the portrait for the About page, the wider frame for the homepage banner, the working shots that break up a services page, the vertical crops that social platforms want, and something with enough space around it to take a headline. One session, a year of images.
It also means the planning happens first. A branding session starts before the camera comes out — with what you sell, who buys it, and what those people need to believe about you before they get in touch. The photographs are then made to support that, rather than made attractive and captioned afterwards.
The Branding Collection
- Before the day
- Consultation and image board, built around your audience and goals
- Session length
- 1 hour
- Looks
- Multiple outfits and looks, with different backgrounds and compositions
- Direction
- Guided posing throughout, and image review during the shoot
- You receive
- Every image from the session unedited, plus 10 professionally retouched images
- Turnaround
- Delivered within one week
- Prepared for
- Website, social media, press, marketing and print
- Included
- Kay's Personal Branding Guide
- From
- $500
Your images are yours to use for your business — website, LinkedIn, press, print and marketing. Kay keeps the copyright and may show the work in her portfolio.
Who this is for
The people who get the most out of a branding session are the ones whose face and their business are the same thing.
- Founders and small business owners, where the company's credibility is not distinguishable from the owner's. There is a dedicated page for founders.
- Consultants, advisers and coaches, who sell judgement and have nothing physical to photograph.
- Authors and speakers, who need a press kit that does not consist of one cropped conference snapshot.
- Practice owners — clinics, studios, firms — where the space itself is part of what is being sold.
- Artists and creators, whose work and working environment tell the story better than a plain background would.
If what you actually need is one strong photograph for a profile, a headshot session at $200 is the honest recommendation and Kay will say so.
Sessions
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How a branding session is built
- 01
The consultation
Before anything is scheduled: what you sell, who you sell it to, where the images will live, and what is currently doing that job badly.
- 02
The image plan
A shot list built from that conversation — which frames, which settings, which formats, and which pages on your site each one is destined for.
- 03
Wardrobe and location
What to bring and in what order, and whether the session runs in the studio, at your workplace, or across both.
- 04
The shoot
Multiple outfits, backgrounds and compositions, with guided posing and images reviewed on screen as the session runs.
- 05
Retouching and delivery
Professionally retouched images prepared for website, social media, press, marketing and print, with the Personal Branding Guide.
The strategy behind it
Kay's background is unusual for a photographer and it is the reason the planning comes first. She holds a Master's degree in Visual Communication Design and has practised as a hospital pharmacist for fifteen years — healthcare, design and visual communication in one person.
Visual communication design is, at its core, the discipline of making an image do a specific job for a specific audience. Applied to a branding session, it turns the question from does this photograph look good into does this photograph do the work I need it to do on the page it is going on. Those are different questions and they produce different pictures.
There is more about that background, and how it shapes the work, on the about page.
Questions
How many images do I get?
Ten professionally retouched images, delivered within one week, prepared for website, social media, press, marketing and print. You also receive every image from the session unedited, so you can see what was shot rather than only what was selected.
Where does a branding session happen?
In the Naperville studio, at your own workplace, on location, or across a combination of those in one day. Sessions that use your real working environment tend to produce the images clients use most, because the room is part of the story.
How often do people redo a branding session?
Most people get a year or more out of a session, which is the point of shooting several looks at once. A rebrand, a new service line, a book, or a significant change in how you look are the usual triggers for the next one.
Do you photograph products or interiors as part of the session?
Details of the space, the tools of the trade and the work itself are a normal part of a branding day and often carry a services page better than another portrait would. Larger branding projects are quoted on the size and needs of the project.
Start with a conversation
A year of images, planned in one day.
The Branding Collection starts at $500 and begins with a consultation about who you are trying to reach.