How do you want to be seen?

We spend a lot of time wondering whether we look good in photographs.

But I think there’s a more useful question.

How do you want to be seen?

What do you want your photographs to communicate about you?

Before a personal branding shoot, I ask my clients to choose three words.

They might be:

Credible. Approachable. Confident.

Or:

Bold. Creative. Warm.

Or something completely different.

There are no right words. They just need to feel like you — and like the way you want to show up.

I also ask clients to pull together a few images that appeal to them. Not photographs to copy, but images that help us think about mood, energy, style and overall direction.

The three words tell me how you want to be seen.

The images give me the visual brief.

And from there, we can think about clothes, locations, light, backgrounds and the kind of photographs we’re going to create.

For me, this is why the camera is almost the last part of the chain.

You don’t start with the photograph.

You start with the person.

Because when someone stands in front of my camera, I don’t want to fit them into a predetermined set of poses or make them look like somebody else.

I want to understand who they are and how they want to be seen.

And then, during the shoot, something often shifts.

The self-consciousness starts to disappear. The connection builds. They begin to stop thinking quite so much about the camera.

And then there’s that moment when I turn the camera around and show them an image.

The reaction I’m always hoping for is:

“That’s me.”

Not a perfected version.

Not somebody pretending to be more confident, more polished or more anything.

Just them — seen in a way that feels right.

Perhaps that’s the question worth asking of any photograph you use to represent yourself:

Is this how I want to be seen?

And perhaps the very best photographs are the ones where the answer is simply:

Yes. That’s me.