14 Sep She Didn’t Just Take My Photograph – She Captured Me
There are photographs of you.
And then there are photographs that somehow feel like you.
I recently had a full branding experience with Brigitta from NUX Photography, and when I received my finished gallery, I genuinely felt quite emotional.
Because I wasn’t simply looking at some lovely new photographs.
I was looking at me.
Not a heavily posed version of me.
Not somebody else’s idea of how a coach, author, speaker or businesswoman should look.
Me. My strength. My playfulness. My confidence.
My vulnerability. My personality. My story.
Somehow, Brigitta had captured all of it.
The woman behind the camera
The more I have learned about Brigitta’s own story, the more I understand why she works the way she does.
Before building NUX Photography, Brigitta spent more than 25 years on the other side of the camera as an actress and fashion and commercial model.
She worked internationally and experienced the world of photography not simply as someone holding the camera, but as the person standing in front of it.
And I think that matters.
Because she understands that having your photograph taken can make you feel incredibly exposed.
Most of us aren’t professional models.
We wonder where to put our hands.
We become conscious of our bodies.
We worry about our smile, our clothes, our hair or whether the camera is going to pick up every little thing we don’t particularly like about ourselves.
Brigitta understands that vulnerability because she knows both sides of the lens.
But she also has an extraordinary ability to read people.
She watches.
She listens.
She notices the little expressions and movements that are naturally you.
And then she creates the environment where you stop worrying quite so much about the camera.
That’s when something changes.
It wasn’t about making me look like somebody else
One of the things I loved most about my shoot was that I never felt as though Brigitta was trying to turn me into somebody else.
And at this stage of my life, that is incredibly important to me.
I’ve spent a great deal of my personal and professional life talking about authenticity, identity and owning our stories.
So the last thing I wanted was a collection of beautiful photographs that didn’t actually feel like Frances.
I wanted photographs that reflected the woman I am today.
Author. Speaker. Coach. Businesswoman. Advocate.
But also the woman behind all those titles.
The laughter. The confidence. The serious side. The slightly quirky side.
The woman who has lived a life, has a story and isn’t interested in hiding anymore.
Brigitta understood that.
This is why branding photography matters
Before this experience, I probably thought about branding photography in the way many business owners do.
You need some good photographs for your website.
A new LinkedIn picture.
Something for your social media.
Perhaps a few images for flyers, speaking engagements and marketing.
Now I see it very differently.
I’ve come away from this experience with a library of images that I can use to tell different parts of my story.
I can already see them appearing across my websites, social media, blogs, PR, speaking work, events, Life Edits™, Broken Bones and the different projects I have planned.
I haven’t just bought photographs for next week’s Instagram post.
I have invested in visual assets for my brand that I believe I will still be using two, three, perhaps even five years from now.
And that completely changes how I think about the value of professional branding photography.
She captured the essence of me
This is probably the biggest compliment I can give Brigitta.
She didn’t just capture what I look like.
She captured the essence of who I am.
There are photographs where I can see my strength.
Others where I can see the softness.
Some make me laugh because they are so unmistakably me.
And others have made me stop and look at myself slightly differently.
That is a very special skill.
Anyone can press a shutter.
Technical knowledge matters enormously, of course, but what Brigitta brings is something beyond the equipment.
It’s her experience.
Her eye.
Her intuition.
Her humour.
Her ability to connect.
And perhaps most importantly, her ability to make the person standing in front of her camera feel safe enough to actually show up.
Not perform.
Show up.
More than a photoshoot
Brigitta talks about her work as “Photographic Therapy”, and having now experienced a branding shoot with her, I understand what she means.
There is something quite powerful about being encouraged to take up space and then being shown an image of yourself where you can actually see the person other people have perhaps been seeing all along.
For women in particular, I think there can be something very powerful in that.
We spend so much of our lives worrying about how we look.
Too old. Too young. Too big. Too small. Not photogenic. Not confident enough.
Waiting until we’ve lost weight, changed our hair, bought the right clothes or somehow become a different version of ourselves.
But perhaps we don’t need to become somebody else before we’re worthy of being photographed.
Perhaps we simply need the right person behind the camera to help us see what is already there.
The beginning of something
This blog is also the beginning of something I want to do over the coming weeks and months.
I want to take you behind the photographs.
I’ll be sharing some of the images from my shoot, talking about the stories behind them and introducing you properly to the woman who created them.
Because when somebody has a talent like this, I believe it’s worth talking about.
And I want more people within my own community and beyond it to discover Brigitta and NUX Photography.
So you’ll be seeing quite a lot of my face for a while!
But hopefully you’ll also start seeing something else.
The woman behind the photographs.
Because this experience has reminded me that great branding photography isn’t really about looking perfect.
It’s about being seen.
And for perhaps the first time in a collection of professional photographs, I don’t just recognise my face.
I recognise myself.
Frances x