MEET MY CLIENT HAZEL LOWNDES!
Hazel Lowndes is an expert at all things people with a background in psychology she has had a fascinating career all over the world in Organisational Development. Now Hazel is launching her own practice. Meet Ginger Dog! Together we created authenticity through headshots.
HOW WE MET
You may remember my recent blog on Natalie Hailey’s Speaker Photography. Natalie is setting up Hazel’s new social media strategy and she recommended me to help Hazel with some new quirky branded headshot that fit with her fresh Ginger Dog brand.
THE QUIRKY BRANDED SHOOT PLANNING
Hazel and I had an initial consultation on Skype to get to know each other a bit better before the camera was involved. I love this part of the Quirky service! Having a good grounding of anyone’s backstory really helps me to develop a genuine context whilst shooting, I tend to scribble wild notes which then serve as my mood planning just before a session. Hazel’s love this time to ask technical questions, be involved in photographic planning and calm any nerves of the unknown before their shoot day.
HAZEL’S ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT HEADSHOTS WISH-LIST
From our consultancy session together, a wish list developed that included some key factors I knew that it was important to involve and include the following in this shoot.
FANTASTIC BRAND GUIDELINES
Hazel has worked with a fantastic graphic designer. For me, a graphic designer becomes fantastic when they provide some considered brand guidelines. This is like a pretty very pretty cheat sheet for me to get a rapid snapshot of all of their workings on brand development. I use these visual prompts to form a lot of the basis of my headshot planning.
It’s like the hymn sheet the creative team can use to tune their instruments up to before playing the client song.
LAPTOP LIFESTYLE
Living a laptop lifestyle is already a large part of Hazel’s working style. With Ginger Dog, Hazel is looking to recruit a wealth of knowledge from virtual Change Management and People professionals. Have a collective business model is truly incredible. So long stuffy fluoro-lit offices! Hello, virtual work that fits around your family and lifestyle needs.
FRIENDLINESS AND AUTHENTICITY
As you would expect Hazel is naturally a people’s person. She values real authenticity and has injected her friendliness into the Ginger Dog brand.
Authenticity in photography is often an elusive beast. You know in an instant when you haven’t captured it but, if you strive to catch it, you are very unlikely to see it in the final photos. My plan of action was to keep the mood of our session mellow and conversational so as to invite some authentic energy and not scare it away by putting it onto centre stage and staring at it.
HAZEL’S QUIRKY BRANDED HEADSHOT SESSION
Hazel absolutely loves Newcastle and the Georgian architecture here. With that in mind, we decided to shoot a variety of backdrops in the city centre.
GREY STREET, NEWCASTLE
To mark our first point on the little route I had planned, we headed into the beautiful Central Arcade.
On our walk down Grey Street, we ducked to very friendly Last Iguanas. They were setting up for lunchtime service and we were able to grab some colourful and vibrant at work laptop lifestyle shots thank you so much for having us we really appreciate it.
Further still, I asked Hazel if she enjoyed art deco design. She told me that she loved it so we headed into the beautiful Melbourne house. I would love to have an office here one day it’s always been one of my most favourite buildings in Newcastle.
On our way out from Milburn House we got into a great conversation with the gentleman behind reception. He told us about the history of this building and that it was one of the key buildings for the shipyard management way back when. The entire building is shaped like a giant ship with the pointy bow facing towards the River Tyne, and stern of the building pointing back into the city. What’s more, all floors within Milburn House are backwards alphabetically, just like how you find on any ship.
THE BALTIC, NEWCASTLE
To give this quirky headshot session a modern take that blends well with the new brand we decided to finish our shoot at the Baltic Art Gallery.
As a lovely round-off to our session we went into Baltic Kitchen for a cuppa and I caught some extra photography when there thank you so much for being so welcoming to me all the time I love you guys!
I’m just reading @GingerDogOD quirky #branded #headshot blog and I value true authenticity in my #personalbrand too @laurapcreative Click To TweetHAZEL’S EDIT
To support Hazel in her editing, I met with her on Skype to go over the private session preview gallery.
We worked on narrowing down images to a final selection of authentic organisational development headshots that met the original wish list. It was important to ensure that wider team members like web designers, social media managers, graphic designers and the like would have plenty of on-brand photography to work with. I can’t wait to see this collection in use.
THE RETOUCH
We had a variety of great natural light in this shoot, and this translated into photography that was near to final sign-off in-shot. To polish things up a little bit we did some selective details sharpening and made sure that the orange accessories worn in the session matched as close as possible to the Ginger Dog in post.
EXTRA THANKS TO
I would officially like to thank the great venues that provided us with fabulous backdrops in this session.
LAS IGUANAS – NEWCASTLE
Such a welcoming bunch. ALWAYS!
MILBURN HOUSE – NEWCASTLE
THE BALTIC – NEWCASTLE
THROUGH CLIENT EYES
I asked Hazel to do a quick piece to camera to let you know what she thought about the Quirky Branded service. Here’s what happened:
WHAT ABOUT YOU?
If are also a people person, and you would like a slice of authenticity in your next headshot’s, you need to know where to go next.
GET SOME MORE INSPIRATION
Take a look at the Headshots Gallery to see more of my clients’ results and get ideas for how you would like to shoot with me for yourself.
DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE
If you are a details kind of person, you need to know how my different services work. This is the brochure to download for all that jazz.