"Portraiture is an experience, one that can help you grow in courage, confidence, and self respect."

I've just rewritten the home page on this website and have FINALLY put my photo offers into words over the last week and I tell you what:

shout out to anyone who manages their own website or writes the copy for it (with no help from a large language model).

Grinding away, writing and re-writing copy for this site over the last fortnight has meant that every now and then I've come up with something really good.

I’ve struck one of the veins of the gold that's inside my business. Writing about my biz has been a lot like writing about my artistic practice so I’m glad they made us do that heaps at Browne School of Art.

But I digress.

In every portrait session over the last two years I've paid close attention to what goes on in a photoshoot. I've listened to what women say about the experience and how they feel. I've seen the way they engage with whole idea of having one's photo taken and I've made mental notes, not so I can get all sales-y on this website but so that I describe the impact on everyone in the room, me included.

I've paid close attention because taking pics may be my j.o.b. but I don't see myself just as a service provider. It's more than that. (Trust an artist to need to turn her work into something essential to living lol.) The impact is at the very least "positive" - we had fun and had some great conversations. It's often deeper than that though - an adjustment in self-perception is happening or perhaps the experience turns out to be transformative.

Coming out of a cocoon.

Shedding a skin they've outgrown.

What I’m doing isn’t just about the images. It just so happens that pics are great, especially with my friend Alison Brewer on the hair and makeup tools. The light in my studio is lovely and my Canon camera’s a beast.

I’ve been thinking about the experience of being photographed for quite a while so when I wrote that title on my homepage…then read it…then scrolled through the portraits that follow it…

I felt a little pang of emotion, actually. Took me by surprise.

The kind of pang that means "Yes. I love that."

This isn't spin.

I've witnessed quiet transformations in headshot shoots enough times now and read enough OMG THANK YOU emails to know I'm on to something.

I’m saying I and Me a lot here but this is a We thing. Good portraits are the result of connection. Sometimes it’s a connection between subject and photographer and every photograph I take where the subject is looking at the lens captures that. Other times it's the witnessing of an inner connection that counts, like the picture of LA Mitchell thinking out loud, above.

Portraiture is an experience, one that can help you grow in courage, confidence, and self respect.

They’re #notjustheadshots.

xAB

PS: Shout out to all the beauties in these images. Top to bottom: Carolyn Röhm, Wynona Dekker, Emily Palmer, Lauren Mitchell.

PPS: Kisses also to any sole traders out there doing the most. Let me help you with the photos bit.

PPPS: props also to Tania from Soulful Story Co, a wonderful teacher and mentor for creative people in business.