Personal branding lifestyle shoot for a musician – the complete process from start to finish

by Alex Baker, Spain

I was asked recently by a friend and long standing client to collaborate on creating a series of curated lifestyle images for her personal brand. She is a Yamaha sponsored artist and professional cellist and singer, and her band has enjoyed rising success over the last couple of years. Now she has reached a point where the record label is changing the focus from her band to herself, so the time was perfect for creating a more relaxed behind the scenes style that she can use on her social media feeds as she always struggles to find content.

The first thing then was to sit down and have a meeting with her about the direction she was going in, what kind of style she was after and how we would do the shoot. We decided on a loose story along the lines of a ‘day in the life’, although it would be condensed into just an afternoon/evening. I thought people might find it interesting to see some of the practice and song writing process that is the majority of her day to day life, along with some shots walking around the old town of Valencia near where she lives. I wanted some sunset shots on her roof terrace so we worked backwards from the time of sunset (9:30pm) to figure out when to start.

On the day of the shoot I arrived and set up. I had 3 lenses available to use: 35mm, 50mm and a new 105mm that I’m still experimenting with. The apartment is on the top floor with many windows and a largely white interior so light wasn’t going to be an issue. I decided where to shoot and we cleared away a few personal items to clean things up a little in the background, while still keeping the look quite homely. I then directed her to play various things on the instrument or to look in certain directions to get the shots I wanted that showed a variety of expressions.

Although I usually make a shot list in advance I usually just memorize it and I only ever check items off the list if it’s for a strict brief or for a video shoot – this one was much more relaxed so I could concentrate on creating the images and having fun experimenting. After we had finished inside, my client changed wardrobe and we headed outside to a local bar where we were shooting next. On the way we found an 18th century building with peeling paint texture and wonderful light. So of course we had to stop and get some shots there because how often do you find a wall the exact same color as your jacket?! I find not sticking exactly to a shot list also allows me to keep my eyes open for serendipitous moments along the way that I might not have thought of. After this we got some shots in a couple of local bars to show the relaxed Spanish cafe-culture. We then headed back to the roof terrace for another outfit change and the sunset.

After the client chose the images I edited them with complete creative freedom to do as I pleased (see video). Generally I set basic exposure adjustments in ACR then bring the image into photoshop for skin retouching and color grading. Lately I’ve been enjoying using Pratik Naik’s Infinite Color Panel plugin for creating color grades rapidly that I can then apply to a whole series (I’m not affiliated, I just like it!). And that’s it, a personal branding shoot from start to finish that my client can use across multiple social media platforms in the coming months.