Two tips to help you express your personal style through your photos
Two tips to help you express your personal style through your photos
Today I want to share two key things that can help you to express your personal style and personality through your online dating photos. I’m going to take you through the process and show you how I would come up with a brief for my photographer outlining some ideas for my own dating shoot.
1. Figuring out what makes you, you. Your USP.
This can actually be quite tricky because you don’t often need to think about this in every day life, do you, you just kind of take yourself for granted. An easy way to get you started is to think about the following questions and jot down the answers, but don’t spend ages over them. Just write down the first things that pop into your head.
when are you at your happiest?
- with a camera in my hand
- listening to my favourite tunes
- being somewhere new & exploring
- relaxing, drinking with friends, family etc
- eating a cornetto
what 3 adjectives would you use to describe your personal style?
- laidback
- unruly
- lol, can’t even think of another one
what kind of clothes do you feel good wearing?
- denim
- leather
- cardigans
- tee shirts
- hats
- boots, always
who are your style icons?
this changes sometimes but currently:
- neneh cherry
- gwen stefani
- ellen von unwerth
- vivenne westwood
- grace jones
what story/stories do you want to tell others about yourself?
- i break the usual mould
- i embrace & celebrate the fact that i break the mould
- i’m bold & playful – my business’s core values
OK, so how was that? I was struggling to answer these at times so I created a moodboard over here on Pinterest. Yup, I’m a visual person as you know so this worked better for me. And guess what? It’s really, really easy to do and it’s actually quite good fun. But I know this doesn’t work for those of you who aren’t visual.
2. Being bold enough to show others & your photographer
OK, so you’ve figured out a bit more about how you want to portray yourself, but now for the hard bit, you need to share it with your photographer and then the wider dating world. So, reading through my answers and looking at my moodboard, this is how I would brief my online dating photographer about how I’d like to portray myself in my photos.
Dear dating photographer
I would love some shots:
- with my beloved canon 5Dii
- with my headphones on
- lying on the grass with my fave vinyl record covers beside me
- in an urban setting with a bit of graffiti around / interesting shops / lively stuff going on / not somewhere i know all that well e.g. dalston
- with my rings in the shot
- wearing my fave hat
- being playful, larking around (towards the end of the shoot when i’ve warmed up) maybe holding a cornetto or wearing some heart-shaped sunglasses etc
I would also send them a link to my Pinterest moodboard because I know as a photographer, they are going to be a visual person and will really be able to build up a picture of what’s going on in my head before we meet. I’d also send them a couple of my current favourite photos of me so they could see how I like to look in photos.
I know this may seem like a lot of effort, but if you want to make the most of this opportunity, it’s worth spending half an hour thinking about the shoot and sharing your thoughts with the photographer before the day.
