Early in 2019, Emma booked her personal branding photo shoot with me and we took to the streets of Braamfontein to capture the images we were looking to create.

This is Emma. She’s a portrait photographer and specializes in creating beautiful artwork of dogs and their humans. She has also just launched her Mentoring for Creatives program and offers amazing workshops in collaboration with Nikon South Africa, which is how we first met.

As a businesswoman, Emma knows the importance of continuously building her brand and moving forward year-on-year, which is why I was so excited to work with her and to be a part of her journey.

While she hails from the northern hemisphere (England to be precise), she has embraced South Africa and her adopted turf in Gauteng and knows more nooks and crannies than some of the locals do. She chose the decorated streets of Johannesburg city for the setting of her shoot and we managed to find some wonderfully creative spots to take advantage of.

When it comes to branding yourself and your business, you’ll want everything to tie back to the same message. A little trick I find works quite well is to write down a few keywords that relate to you and to then build your campaign around these. For Emma I would use words such as creative, powerful, driven, unique, and confident.

I also loved that she had her adorable hound, Edward, in tow and we included him in some of our photographs to tie in with her message of dog portraiture and her passion for supporting the process of adopting animals.

We had a great day out in the streets of Jozi and spending time with Emma is always inspirational. If you’d like to see some of her work and to follow her journey, head on over to www.emmaobrien.com.

To find out more about a personal branding photo shoot for yourself or to chat, contact me here.