MEET MY CLIENT LESLEY CALLAND
Lesley Calland is a top business coach. She recently re-branded her coaching business, opting for a really personal approach. This meant it was time for some fresh business headshots.
I was introduced to this project by her marketing team. I instantly felt blown away with how magnetic Lesley was as a coach, she has a real knack for drawing out your biggest ideas. So much so that we pushed this service right out to its most maximum possibilities for her. Lesley is in fact The Full Sch-Whammy OG!
This is Lesley’s original headshot. She wanted to update things in line with her personal rebranding. She jumped straight on board with my vision for shooting her session on location, with some trusted suppliers to really level things up.
THE FULL SCH-WHAMMY PLANNING
I chatted with Lesley and her rebranding team about the concept of her story as a coach. I wanted to know why she does what she does. What really makes her tick? Then put all of that story into her business headshots.
It transpires that at the very start of shaking up her career as a business coach, Lesley built EVERYTHING from taking out key people for a cup of coffee. You can see how this flows beautifully into her new homepage (you can read the detail of this story too)
Along with this key ‘why’ story, I chatted with Lesley about her personal style and found out how she carries out her work with her very varied clients in a day-to-day way. Slowly my mind began to fill with images of how we could narrate this story into some truly branded and personally unique headshots.
Never before had a client allowed me to indulge my creativity in this way. Going out on a hunch I’ve been formulating behind the scenes for the last few months was truly exhilarating! My mind always works like this when I listen to people speaking. Let me tell you how disheartening it is when a lovely story about how someone works is then followed by the crippling and stifling blow of. “So if you could just stick my ugly mug on one of them plain white back drops Laura….. that would be fab. It’ll only take yer 10 minutes…. Oh, n how much? Not too dear I hope!” Its like a knife to my creative heart, each and every single time.
I had to get a team who “got me” to help me pull this off.
THE LESLEY CALLAND FULL SCH-WHAMMY CREW
STYLE
I’ve worked with Nichola from the Wardrobe Provocateur on many occasions. We started doing a lot of TFP shoots a couple of years ago, and since then have been working here and there. Nichola instantly knew exactly what I needed when it came to styling Lesley’s Full on headshots session.
I felt I could trust her to reach out to her and build up the right kind of rapport with her to get styled looks pulled in time, and within the context of Lesley’s energy and new re-branding.
MAKEUP
I’ve recently worked with Ashleigh from Diva Dust on a few assignments. Ashleigh has the loveliest of personalities. She is calm and gentle. On a lot of photoshoots, it is common to have a lot of wild personalities at play. Ashleigh rounds out a team, and produces great work whilst making sure clients have that bubble of zen when they need it.
MARKETING
Andrew and Pete would be coming along to this session in an advisory capacity. At the time of shooting, Lesley’s website was on standby to go live. They were waiting to add in some final headshots images and really wanted to ensure that cropping was “just right”.
LESLEY CALLAND’S FULL SCH-WHAMMY SHOOT
The shoot day went swimmingly. I had planned out a centralised base for us all to work from in the middle of town, and from this spot, we had several different locations to get to over the course of the day.
GREY STREET
At this time of year natural light is completely on your side as a photographer. One of the things that came out from my lengthy conversations with Lesley about how she works is that she is always on the go. She travels extensively to each of her clients to support them in their various endeavours. I wanted to convey this with her working and walking.
Similar to me, Lesley explained that it is whilst in this high-energy state, that she often gets her own great ideas. How about you?
CARLUCCIOS, NEWCASTLE
Working with the central press office and then the fantastic management team of Carluccio’s Newcastle, we were able to find a spacious and modern setting to tell Lesley’s coffee story. The team were simply marvellous to work with, and kept us supplied with fresh and frothy cups of perfectly styled cappuccino throughout. We love you Carluccios!
LESLEY CALLAND’S BUSINESS HEADSHOTS EDIT
Lesley’s editing was handled remotely online. We worked together over some skype conferencing and I also met separately to discuss web-specific editing with Andrew and Pete.
THE RETOUCH
Having one of my favourite combinations of pro lighting in an on-location setting meant that we could really pull out all the stops on the high-end polishing of the retouching in all of Lesley’s collection of images. It’s that level of luxury that I had envisioned at the start of this project.
WHAT ABOUT YOU?
If you love luxury like Lesley and you want to have a pampered, styled and on-location headshots session there are two places to head to next:
MORE BUSINESS HEADSHOTS INSPIRATION
You can head directly to the Headshots Gallery to see more of my Headshots clients results and get ideas for how you would like to shoot with me for yourself.
DOWNLOAD THE LATEST BROCHURE
If you are a details kind of person, you need to know how my different services work. This is the guide you will need to download for all that jazz.