Touching Grass: When a Personal Branding Session Captures a Concept, Not Just a Person
A personal branding session doesn't just photograph you. It photographs your ideas. Here's how a strategy meeting turned one client's daily ritual into his most-used images.
Before I pick up a camera, I sit down and ask questions.
What does your work actually look like? Who are your clients? What matters to you outside the obvious? What do you want people to understand about you that they can't get from your website?
Every personal branding session starts here, in a strategy meeting. It's a conversation, not a briefing. And it's the reason the images that come out of the session mean something, rather than just looking nice.
I want to tell you about one of those conversations, because it changed the way I think about what personal branding photography can do.
"I need to show myself touching grass"
Benjamin White is a Web3 entrepreneur and founder of Audio Galleries. His work spans Europe, North America, and the Middle East. Most of his day is spent on video calls, in inboxes, and on screens. His business runs almost entirely online.
When we sat down for the strategy meeting, we talked through his messaging, his audience, and the kind of images he'd need. The usual: working shots, consulting shots, something for his media pack, content for his podcast profiles. Then he said something I hadn't heard before.
"I need to show myself touching grass."
I asked him to explain.
He told me that "touching grass" is his phrase for stepping away from screens and reconnecting with the real world. It's something he talks about with his clients and his team. Every day, he signs off with a version of the same message: time to touch grass.
It's part of how he works. Part of what he stands for. And he wanted his images to show that.
So we photographed the concept
We didn't just get the standard set of office shots and call it a day. We went outside. We shot him in open space, away from a desk, away from a screen. And yes, we shot him literally touching grass.
Those images became some of the most-used from the entire session. Ben puts them alongside his posts about disconnecting, about balance, about the importance of being present. They work because they're tied to something real, not because they're technically impressive.
A stock photo of someone standing in a field would not have done this. It would have looked like clip art. These images mean something because they came from a conversation about what actually matters to him. You can see the full set from Ben's session in his client story.
A headshot shows your face. Personal branding shows your world.
This is the difference between a headshot session and a personal branding session.
A headshot gives you a professional photo for your LinkedIn and your website. That's valuable, and I spend most of my time doing exactly that. But a personal branding session goes further. It captures the things that make your work yours.
Your environment. Your routine. The details that your audience wouldn't know about unless you showed them. The ideas you keep coming back to.
"Touching grass" wasn't on any generic shot list. I'd never have known about it without the strategy meeting. Without that conversation, I'd have delivered a perfectly good set of images of Ben at a desk, at his podcast setup, in a meeting room. The same kind of images everyone else is using. And my clients don't come to me to look like everyone else — they come because they want to stand out and be authentically themselves.
The strategy meeting is what makes the difference. It's where I learn what matters to you, so the images can show it.
What's your version of "touching grass"?
Every client I've worked with has something like this. A phrase, a habit, a belief, a way of working that defines how they show up. Most of them don't think of it as something worth photographing. That's my job to spot.
Sometimes it's obvious. Sometimes it only comes out halfway through the strategy meeting, when we're past the surface-level answers and into the stuff that actually drives the work. That's when the best ideas emerge.
If you're thinking about personal branding photography and you're not sure what your version of "touching grass" looks like, that's fine. You don't need to know before we start. That's what the strategy meeting is for.
I photograph professionals across the South West, bringing the session to your workspace or a location that suits you. If you want to see more of what personal branding photography looks like in practice, have a look at how I help clients use their images or read about what it means to show who you really are.