Have you ever heard about someone doing something interesting and then popped their name into google or LinkedIn to find out more about them? Find out what others are saying about getting headshots with Life and Portraits.

What pops up when people search you?

Sometimes it’s content others in the world have created about us, and sometimes we control the results. So if you have the opportunity to tell your own story, why not do it well? Align the results with your core values so it’s something you can be proud of, and build trust with your audiences. Let your professional brand help you achieve your purpose.

We’re not all the same

How do you feel about your passport photo? This question tends not to elicit pride and excitement, yet many people choose to use similar photos for their LinkedIn profile.

Expressionless by design, so no personality can sneak in.

Boring lighting that provides no mood (except boredom), and no ability to flatter with posing and angles. Passport photos all look essentially the same, that’s the point of them. That’s the opposite of what you want with your executive branding or professional branding.

Aligning Your Professional Brand

You have personality! You have goals, and I bet they don’t involve a mug shot, so please stop using a profile photo that feels like a mug shot to tell the world who you are. Great people need great headshots.

Personal branding is so much more than just a pretty picture though. A great picture is going to extend that teeny tiny attention span people have so they’ll actually read a bit about your values, your goals, your impact and then will want to engage with you. We all know we aren’t supposed to judge a book by its cover, but if people didn’t do it the design industry wouldn’t exist. Intentional online branding is just as important as the clothing you would wear to an interview, it won’t get you the job but it will get you the audience to pitch to.

This is not about looking ‘a part’ you feel like an imposter in. It’s about aligning yourself with your goals, and narrating that to the public to make it easier for them to know who you are and what you stand for. Trust is built through each of these pieces being aligned, so if you’re doing great things, but your photo looks like you’re doing time let’s change that right now. If you have lofty goals, make your pathway to success easier by creating an executive brand that aligns with those goals.

Reach isn’t the silver bullet, and neither is a photo. However, if led by strong values both can help you achieve great things.

Executive Branding on Linkedin

LinkedIn is the easiest to use, most basic and effective place to begin to build your professional brand online. Make sure you fill out the full profile, because leaving large gaps (or a blank profile picture) tells people you may be aimless with tasks. Include your education, and volunteering because tying your account to the institutions you’re proud to be associated with also makes connections with others who are!

Remember that LinkedIn is a professional social platform, so it’s not a place to spam – you will get some of that and you should immediately break your connections with those people. To avoid spam don’t connect with accounts that have no notable connection to you, and immediately disconnect from the accounts that do harass your inbox. Don’t be the reason someone else trusts to connect with a spamming account. If you’ve spammed me, you’ll notice we are no longer connected, and I’m not sorry about it.

Champion those who deserve it! If you can endorse skills for awesome people you’ve worked with, do it! Reciprocity is alive and well, so not only is it a nice thing to do, but it often comes back to you. It also lets LinkedIn know you may be someone to consult for expertise.

Not just for Executives

Despite the name executive branding isn’t just for executives, it’s for all leaders and people who want to make an impact.

Quick tips for LinkedIn Photos

• Let your personality shine
• Don’t use a cell phone photo – professionalism matters here
• Skip AI – Headshots are supposed to build trust, nothing ruins that faster than if they’re fake
• Consider your purpose and audience – do you really want your family photo here?
• Make your face big, that circle is tiny!
• Don’t look like everyone else, disrupt the feed
• Don’t forget about your cover photo! This is a great opportunity to showcase you in your element.

Ready to be more strategic with your professional brand?

My oldest daughter has been doing career research at school. My youngest tells her I’m the boss of my work. I tell her that while I am, I’m also the finance department, the administrative assistant, customer service, the cleaning lady and IT because a sole proprietor is someone who is the only employee of their company.

Being a sole proprietor involves learning to do a lot of things yourself, but it also means finding great resources.

This month the studio has been closed while awaiting business licence approval. During this time I’ve been brushing up on my IT Department skills. I love sharing about great resources I’ve found with others.

Moving from Fort McMurray to Calgary means my website needs to step it up. Ranking on the front page of google takes work in a city of over a million people. Evidence shows people rarely look past the first page (or top 10 results) of a search.

Some of the work to improve my website has been complex and requires me to stay at it and be consistent. There have also been some great tools and tips I can pass along for others who would like to start looking into their own personal IT departments though.

Quick and Easy Website Tools for Sole Proprietors

I run my own website, using wordpress, and relying heavily on Yoast. It’s one of the few platforms I do pay for a premium membership with because it explains things in really easy language. Another great tool to use for writing and organizing your content in a way search engines will respond is the free wincher on page SEO checker. Be warned though, the free programs only provide you so many attempt to check your pages. I signed up for a free trial because I knew I could focus for the month on this task. The last easy website tool also limits your number of attempts with a free account, but it can check your site performance for you, and is called GTmetrix.

Hosting and Building Websites

While I didn’t have to completely rebuild my website, I did need to clean up a big mess on the back end.

One of the things I knew I had to do, but had been dreading, was changing host providers. My old host provider was using outdated versions of wordpress. They were also constantly spamming me to buy more things that I didn’t need. The worst part though might have been that the service was horrible. Bots were the default for service, and it was very difficult to ever get a human to connect with. WPX came highly recommended by web industry experts, and I can’t say enough great things about them.

I did a before and after with GTMetrix. My site was taking 2.9 seconds to load with my old host, and without any other changes it is now loading in 0.5 seconds. WOW! What an improvement. I did also have my domain transferred to WPX as I like to keep those in one place.

The other thing I love about WPX is they have a human available through the chat within 30 seconds. They migrated my site themselves, so all the fear I had about switching turned out to be wasted energy.

How I help Sole Proprietors

Hiring a professional brand photographer means someone who understands how to craft your image for what it says about you. This isn’t limited to what humans see though. We also understand how search engines see you. Believe it or not Google can’t see pictures. Instead google reads the title and keyword descriptions of an image. Then it uses these as one of its many decision making factors to rank your image and website results.

When we discuss your brand, and your goals, we will also determine which keywords are important and relevant for your images. In addition there will be web optimized images of a specific size so that your website can load quickly. We don’t want your audience leaving before your image loads because you’re uploading high resolution files. Google also doesn’t like that, so they will rank your website much lower if you don’t have properly sized images.

Google Analytics

One search engine reigns supreme and we all know it’s google. Google offers a free tool called google analytics which can show you way more information than you’ll probably ever use. However, it can provide you with great insight onto which of our pages are resonating with your audience, where your audience is, and how long they’re spending on your site. If you are paying someone else to run your site I would highly recommend that you at least monitor your google analytics. There’s an app for your phone, so it’s super easy to spend a few seconds glancing at. I use it to see if writing blogs like this has actually been of any interest to my audience, and if so then I write more of them. If not I change the topics up.

Google Listing

While it’s not exactly your website, your google listing is also crucially important. A healthy google listing will also impact your website performance. Your location can make you more relevant to local audiences, which is important if your target audience are local. Getting google reviews will also help you build authority online, which is one of the factors that helps your website rank higher. On that note, if you’ve had a great experience with Life and Portraits I would love for you to leave a review! Don’t forget to ask your clients to do the same for you too. Let your audience be part of your success as a sole proprietor. People love to champion those they believe in.

Not a Techie

I am not a techie, thought I do love learning and data analysis. When I share these tips it’s from the perspective of a business owner who needs to be able to have a website do it’s part. I am grateful to have found expert software and service providers I can trust, that make it possible for me to do the work on my website myself. While some would say hiring an expert to do these things for me would be better, I believe that as a brand specialist it’s important for me to learn it myself. It’s important to learn the insights so I can do a better job for my own clients, in helping their website and online performance improve.

The Mountains are so close!

This is the most obvious one that a lot of people mentioned, but we’re just a short drive from beautiful mountain escapes like Canmore, Banff and Lake Louise. All year round these locations have beautiful scenery, hikes, and tourism focussed events. Bragg Creek is a great little spot to visit if you’re looking for some of the charm without the hustle and bustle of Banff. We love our hand made bird house from the antique strip mall there. Our mountains also offer some of the world’s best skiing and snowboarding.

Shows and Theatre that Visit Calgary

Ticketmaster is just one of the many places where you can find events happening in town. From The Jube (Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium) hosting shows that travel the world, like travelling broadways’ Mean Girls and Hairspray this year, or the incredible Calgary Philharmonic accompanying Holiday Cirque. We’ve also enjoyed the Alberta Ballet performance of The Nutcracker. When Bluey came to town my 6 year old was pumped!

Great artists also visit the city, like Noah Kahan performing at the Saddledome in March. Aysanabee, one of my new favourite musicians, is performing at the Bella Concert Hall soon too.

Not all the great shows are just here to visit Calgary though, some call the city home. The Arts Common downtown is home to Theatre Calgary, which I have been absolutely blown away by! Last summer I watched 2 shows on the stages of West London, and I’ve seen 4 on broadway, but when I went to see A Christmas Carol by Theatre Calgary last month I was shocked to learn it absolutely rivalled the experience. From the beautiful theatre, to the elaborate stage design, and incredible talent on stage you’ll quickly realize you’re in the world’s next big theatre scene. Plus, while your downtown pop into one of the amazing restaurants on Stephen Ave.

Food

This one is all based on recommendations I’ve had, because I haven’t had the chance to get out and enjoy these myself yet, but here’s what’s on my priority list to try out:

Tom Major is the top recommendation from the fantastic real estate agent who helped us find our new house. Not only is the food supposed to be reliably incredible, but the views of the city are great too!

Buffo was recommended by Calgary Photographer friend Jillian Faulkner as a lunch spot to check out.

Cucina comes highly recommended by my husband, and now that I asked him he wants to go today.

Hy’s apparently sets the standard for steak, and that’s a pretty big promise in the biggest city of a province that is self-proclaimed as having the best beef in the world. Albertan’s know their steak!

Sports Experiences

From the Calgary Flames (I’m not a fan, GO OILERS) but if your team is visiting this is a great chance to come cheer them on in the opponents rink. If you’ve never done that it’s a blast, I try to do it every time the Oilers visit. One of the best things about professional sports teams is the fun rivalry. You’ll notice if you see the giant Flames flag in the back of my next door neighbours house when you visit the studio.

Calgary hosts a huge range of high calibre professional teams! Professional Lacrosse in the Calgary Roughnecks, a CFL team in the Stampeders, WHL hockey at a family friendly ticket price in the Calgary Hitmen (I am a lifelong Hitmen fan and grew up watching them), AHL Calgary Wranglers, Calgary Cavalry Football Club (Soccer), Calgary Surge Basketball, or the high calibre wide range of athletics available to watch through the U of C Dinos, Mount Royal Cougars or SAIT Trojans.

There are also many big events that visit the city! Like The Scotties Tournament of Hearts, Canadian National Skating Championships, and Snowboard Championships.

Cultural Experiences

There are world renown Pow Wow’s held in Siksika and Tsuut’ina each year, as well as many markets where you have the opportunity to purchase your own hand made pieces directly from the artists who made them! We’ve gone to many Pow Wow/s across Alberta as well as western North America, and the beauty of the painted Tipi’s at Siksika’s really stood out.

My favourite museum to visit in college was The Glenbow which is closed for renovations until later this year, but I can’t wait to check out the new and improved version when it reopens! I saw a Group of Seven exhibit here once as a kid that initiated my immense appreciation for Canadian artists. Now my favourite Canadian painters are Alex Javier, Jason Lucas and Fred MacDonald.

Fan Expo visits Calgary each year, with a new list of celebrity guests and booths.

Learning experiences

Telus Spark is one of my kids favourite places. They can’t get enough of the Imax shows and the hands on exhibits. The Calgary zoo is another place they love, especially during special events like Zoolights. Studio Bell is the one I haven’t been to yet, but it hosts the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the architecture is stunning so I plan to check it out soon.

If you’re looking for something more specific, in depth and intentional there are an endless supply of conferences and workshops available within the city.

Adventures

Calaway Park was one of my favourite places to head on a. hot summer day, and when we had summer hockey trips to the city my kids have loved to go too. Speaking of hockey trips Canada Olympic Park hosts a wide range of fun experiences! I’m told downhill karting there is a must! Another adventure park recently shared with me is Granary Road and we’re definitely headed there as soon as they open for the season.

During the winter months go skating in the most magical locations downtown Calgary!

World Class Events Visit Calgary too!

The Calgary Stampede is the busiest time of year to visit Calgary, but if you want to make the trip for something epic that’s the time! The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth has something for everyone! Rodeo, amusement rides, expo showcases, concerts, parties and the adventure of a lifetime. If you’re booking your headshot during this time I recommend the headshot first, and stampede fun to follow – not the other way around!

Shopping

Calgary is home to all the shopping you can imagine. From the popular Cross Iron Mills Outlet Mall, to Calgary’s highest valued commercial building – Chinook Mall. There are also niche spots, like The Camera Store and Strobepro – two of my personal favourite spots as a photographer that are both unique to the city of Calgary!

Recommended Accommodations to Visit Calgary

This hotel is the most easily accessible to the studio, it’s a great price, and also easy to access many of the recommended spots to check out!

Do you have a great recommendation I’m missing?

Intentional personal branding is taking control of your reputation and telling your story in a ways that resonate. Prevent unwanted misunderstandings or assumptions about who you are. Help the market get your story right.

Personal Brand Photography

Not all portraits are personal brand photography. “A brand is a story that resonates” so if the image doesn’t resonate it’s not doing work to build your brand. However, resonating is only one part of being intentional with your brand. If you’re not strategic your brand will resonate with your audience in ways you don’t want it to.

Unprofessional headshots on LinkedIn can tell your audience you’re unprofessional, and that the quality of work you do might be equivalent to the quality they’re seeing of you in that image. No image at all? That can tell your audience that you don’t see projects through, or maybe that you’re not tech savvy enough to figure out basic social platforms. Most people are not sitting around scrolling to intentionally attack strangers on social media (some are but not the ones we care about). However the human brain is always trying to subconsciously solve puzzles using clues.

Expression and mood in your image that connects will leave as lasting an impression as if you were to have a conversation with someone.

Categorizing is a strategy the brain uses to optimize memory. We’ve all seen this with the exercises of memorizing a list of words right? And how making the words relate to each other or form a story significantly improves the word recognition? This strategy of grouping also means if your image reminds them of someone else they may group you together. Or if it reminds them of a trait, they may associate you with that trait.

Personal brand photography can use this information to encourage your audience to group you with the traits you authentically feel and want to be known for.

Can this be used for evil?

I’m sure you can think of examples where people have tried. However, our goal is to help your real story be told, by exploring your passions and the change you hope to make in the world.

According to Seth Godin Familiarity is the laughing pad of trust. Your image is just one piece of your personal brand. It’s to connect you to find your people in the world, the people who care about the same things you do. But this only happens if it works to build trust and that only happens if it’s really you.

Should I copy the style of the people I admire?

Come on now, you already know the answer to this is no. Your life is like art. Be inspired by others, without trying to copy them. Greatness paves the way for others to continue the work, not replicate it. The first person to do something on TikTok might go viral. The 800th person who copies them will likely only have views from their friends.

The foundation of great personal brand photography isn’t gimmicky either though. It should be in subtleties that connect with your audience and make them feel something. Most often the connection in great personal brand portraits is in the eyes. Eyes that tell a story are achieved through skilled coaching that will make you forget that you’re in front of a camera. Instead of rehearsed or terrified eyes the passion of your purpose shines through.

TAKE RISKS

BE A BOSS

DREAM BIG

STRESS LESS

and am reminded of one of my favourite books, The Icarus Deception by Seth Godin.

Believe it or not, I used to be notorious for dreaming too small. I am naturally a risk aversion, fly low person, so becoming an entrepreneur full-time came as a shock even to me. Rejection used to be debilitating for me.

I did everything safely, trying to fit in and doing all I could not to stand out. Until one day I didn’t.

When I read The Icarus Deception I challenged myself to collect 100 rejections, with the goal that each one wouldn’t matter so much to me anymore.

That year I knocked on doors I didn’t feel worthy of, and it provided me seats at tables I didn’t know were available. It turns out that when you surround yourself with great people they see potential in you that you don’t even see in yourself, but even more than that, they help you achieve that potential and inspire you to help others achieve theirs.

New Adventures in Calgary

Five years and thousands of headshots later, it’s time to share about the greatness in a new community. I know it won’t be easy to rebuild a business in a new place, but nothing worth it ever is. So don’t let fear prevent you from dreaming bigger. Don’t limit your potential with tiny thoughts. And when you hear a knock, answer the door.

Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo Staff Headshots

The community of Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo is full of those great people. So much so that they inspired me to show them through my photographs how great they appear to me. The RMWB was my largest headshot group to date, with over 100 employees coming to the studio!

Life and Portraits is not taking further bookings at this time, as the studio is booked to capacity. If you know anyone looking for a corporate portrait and headshot photographer in the Calgary area send them my way! I hope to open the new studio in the spring, please feel free to visit as I would love to see you and am located only about 20 minutes from the Calgary airport.

Thank you for everything Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo. I will be back to visit often, and will always be cheering for you.

Soon to be Calgary Area Photographer;

Crystal Mercredi

I have sat down a dozen times to write about the Fort McKay Pow Wow this year, and how being around the Pow Wow family made us all feel like our hearts were going to explode with love and gratitude. The words just don’t do it justice though, so let’s stop here and for 30 seconds I want to let you feel what it is to be part of Pow Wow. Lean in, put away distractions, and feel the joy. Hope to see you there next year.

What could be better than a weekend event causing connecting and celebrating? This year the appreciation for connection was certainly apparent in more magical moments than I can share but here are some that had me choking back the tears:

Chief Mel Grandjamb taking it all in at the opening ceremonies, photographed through the Eagle Staff which led the processional to start the event.

“It’s her first time ever riding a bike!” He yelled excitedly at me. She had her brand new bicycle all decorated as she strolled down the street like a pro in the bike parade. This moment where she looked up to see the pride beaming on his face still makes me cry. All of the kids did a great job decorating their bikes and themselves! They certainly weren’t letting anything ‘Rain on their parade’

Fort Mckay is one of my favourite places on earth, because so many people that I love live there. This little guy’s mom was in my class for grade’s 7 & 8 when I used to teach.

Lots of hard work was done to create some amazing floats for the parade to kick off the event.

But before the parade could even start the hugs were on!

The magic of connection was not exclusively to humans this weekend, Nitotem from the Arctic Winter Games was in on the action too!

Crystal Young, CEO of Fort Mckay Metis Group was just as excited as the kids to see Nitotem though!

And of course there had to be firetrucks in the parade, especially since Fort Mckay just opened a state of the art, beautiful new fire hall!

This brilliant, happy, beauty was in my grade 8 and 9 classes and just graduated from U of S! She’s going to make the world a better place so watch out for her.

Speaking of people who make the world a better place this is Lina Gallup and one day we’ll probably see her face on money. This weekend we celebrated Lina’s life so far, all 90 years of it! I can’t do her story justice in a short summary, so check out this documentary her incredible daughter Holly made by clicking on one of her photos below:

The entire weekend saw a softball tournament wit some awesome plays and a ton of laughs.

And the corporate tug of war was as entertaining as ever, with the Bouchier women’s team as a last minute entry that took the trophy!

Treaty Days brings out the best dancers, and this year lived up to the hype!

The first evening had magic moments of connection during McKay idol, with stage performances and dancing in the rain.

Day 2’s highlight may have been the concerts, but for Audrey and Norman there was something shining a little brighter! Congrats!

The daytime concerts included Ab-Originalz which are also former students of mine and a super talented with heart. You can check out their facebook page by clicking on their image.

I even got a hat from Felix, who also happens to be a councillor for Fort Mckay Metis now (I’m so proud of him).

When local legend Stephanie Harpe brought her new team (Stephanie Harpe Experience) along the place started bumping – literally, the speaker was jumping!

Streetheart took the stage after Stephanie Harpe Experience warmed up the crowd.

Next up was Big Wreck, and as the rain started to intensify it wasn’t chasing anybody away.

We even had local super musician Max Noseworthy pop out to enjoy and cheer them on!

As always Fort McKay knows how to put on a show, so in addition to their fireworks they also had a drone light show!

But the event wasn’t over with the fireworks!

Day 3 saw the return to Canoe Races after a 5 year haitus and there may have been a few out of practice racers

but they turned it around (switched canoes) and then were all laughs…

The races were fierce

And the crowd had lots of advice!

I love Christmas and all, but there’s something about gathering with hundreds of amazing people to have fun and celebrate in the summer that edges Treaty Days just a bit I think…

I love a great inspirational book. This obsession for me began while I was working for FMPSD and one of my mentors passed me a copy of Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset. Instantly upon reading it I realized I had a lot of work to do on how I viewed success and failure. From there I found Seth Godin’s Icarus Deception which put me on a mission to collect rejections (but actually resulted in opening the doors to incredible opportunities). It was around this time I realized I was in love with marketing and branding, and couldn’t get enough of the books from these great thinkers and storyteller. I’d love to hear what your thoughts are on the books, or what you think we should read next! Below are some quick reviews of a few of the books I’ve read most recently.

Start with Why – Simon Sinek

This book is a great one if you’re starting to feel lost or a little burnt out. It does a great job to bring you back to your core values and does it in a very entertaining story. Any business owners or executive leadership should definitely have this one on their list of books to read if they haven’t gone through it already. It’s one of the rare books I might actually read again every couple of years.

Creativity Inc. – Ed Catmull

THIS IS THE BOOK TO READ! This is my favourite of the month by far. The storytelling is fantastic as Ed takes you on a journey through the history of Pixar and the creative process focussing on the necessity of the journey. This is the best book I’ve read in years, and I rate it right up there with Seth Godin’s Icarus Deception.

Getting to Yes – Roger Fisher

Negotiation is not a strength of mine, however I listened to this book with my husband for his MBA negotiation class on a road trip. While I do not plan on investing significant time developing my negotiation skills, I do greatly appreciate the awareness of strategies in order to identify when I may be dealing with someone trying to use them on me. The beauty of operating a well established sole proprietorship is that I am now at a place where I get to work with only the amazing people that I want to work with, and that means those hard style positional negotiation tactics are a warning sign the client might not be a good match for me and values I stand behind.

Ask For It – Linda Babcock & Sara Laschever

This one was recommended by NAABA ED Michelle Toner, thanks Michelle!

This book highlights the disadvantages women face because of their unlikeliness to ask for what they want and/or need. At first I had a hard time with some of the way women were framed as passive pushovers in the book, but being an evidence based and providing the data meant it didn’t really matter how I felt about it, or my own biases, the facts were the facts. As I progressed through the author actually addresses how it’s natural to feel frustrated by what seems like old fashioned ways of thinking, and how they too were very frustrated by the findings. There are many actionable takeaways in this one thought and I highly recommend it as a reminder that sometimes those manners you were taught are a gender based societal construct you need to shake!

Give and Take – Adam Grant

This book is a great follow up to Ask for It. While it’s not focussed on gender it certainly reinforces the differences between how men and women tend to approach reciprocity and self value differently. However this book explores the approaches of giver, taker and matcher thinking and how these styles work in a variety of environments, in the short and long term.