by Yasmin Bruce | Jul 29, 2025 | Featured, Headshots, Personal Branding
Meet our friend, Yasmin Bruce. For small-business owners, like Yasmin, having a collection of business headshots are essential for showing personality, confidence and the face behind the brand. Yasmin is a small-business owner from Durham, NC, who reached out to us at Teresa Porter Photography to join one of our Headshot Marathon sessions. She envisioned branding photography that felt relaxed, approachable, and true to her style: cozy, casual, yet refined enough to use for her website and professional platforms. Yasmin is The Business Solutionist, and provides tailored, executive virtual services to her clients, so we knew that we had to reflect her expertise and self-assured nature in her founder headshots, which showing her approachability, too. Yasmin also wanted to make sure that she could use her professional headshots in a variety of ways, such as using her photography for social media, and ensuring that there was enough difference in the images to feel refreshed throughout the year.
Crafting Portraits That Reflect Her Brand
Having taken the time to understand Yasmin’s vision and goals for her executive headshots during the planning process, we made sure to design her Headshot Marathon session with variety in mind, both in the backdrops and her outfit choices. Our goal was to ensure that every professional headshot reflected her bright personality while giving her a range of images that she could use across her business platforms.
We always advise our clients to bring three outfits with them to our studio for their professional branding sessions, and in Yasmin’s case, like many of our clients, she found it hard to choose. We told Yasmin to bring several choices with her to our studio in Downtown Cary for her Headshot Marathon session and we helped her select outfits that felt authentic to her brand while creating the down-to-earth yet professional aesthetic she was aiming for. With soft textures, warm tones, and comfortable silhouettes, that all complemented Yasmin’s skin tone and features, we crafted beautiful business headshots that felt relaxed without compromising on professionalism.
With a variety of backdrops, props and settings, we made sure that Yasmin’s business headshots showcased her versatility, while giving her a collection of branding portraits that can be used in a myriad of ways.
Building Confidence in Front of the Camera: Yasmin’s First Headshot Experience
Having never had a professional headshot session before, we placed an extra focus on putting Yasmin at ease and loved that she actually had fun during her portrait session. By being more relaxed in front of the camera, we were able to capture the same confidence that Yasmin brings to her work. During the session, we worked with multiple backdrops to create variety within an altogether cohesive brand look. From light, airy settings in our living room set-up with her coffee in hand, to highlight Yasmin’s approachable nature, to dark, richer backgrounds that added warmth and depth, each set provided a unique take on her brand, all while adding a refined touch.
What made this session stand out was how once Yasmin had adjusted to being photographed, her personality effortlessly shone through. Whether she was smiling warmly at the camera, laughing naturally (we promise you at least one good laugh before you go!), or posing more formally with confidence, every portrait captured the energy and authority she brings to her business; as well as the sense of trust that she wants every client to feel.
Versatile Portraits for Every Platform
The final collection provided Yasmin with a variety of executive headshots that work for every aspect of her professional presence. From personalization on her website, to photography for social media, and speaking opportunities, she now has a collection of personal branding portraits that not only look beautiful but also feel true to who she is.
Be You, With Us
At Teresa Porter Photography, we believe that the best headshot photographers should capture your professional side, the heart of your business and the personality behind it. Whether you’re a first-time business owner, a seasoned pro, or a creative in need of a professional refresh, we’re here to create professional business headshots and branding photography that shows the world who you really are.
by Yasmin Bruce | Jul 22, 2025 | Featured, Headshots, Personal Branding
For wellness professionals, authenticity builds the kind of trust that invites clients in and helps them feel supported from the start. Branding images help set that tone right away. The clients you serve, whether in therapy, yoga, nutrition, or holistic coaching, are looking for real connections with real people. While professional headshots are a great place to start, they only offer a glimpse of who you are and how you work. Lifestyle branding portraits help fill in the rest of the picture.
Why Lifestyle Branding Matters
Instead of traditional, posed photos in a studio setting, lifestyle branding portraits show you in action. These are the moments when you’re doing the work you love, in the spaces that reflect your purpose and mission. That could mean teaching a class, preparing a treatment room, meeting with a client, or simply enjoying a peaceful, reflective moment in a space that inspires you. Your branding images are the perfect opportunity to capture the real you, doing what you do best, in a way that feels natural and true to your brand.
When people visit your website or when they first click on your social media profile, they are looking for signals that say, “you belong here”. Carefully planned out lifestyle branding portraits are essential to your business because they help to communicate that message in a natural, approachable way. For wellness professionals, these portraits show what to expect from your environment, and how your approach, your wellness practices and modalities all come together to provide transformative support your clients. They give future clients the opportunity to engage with your work and envision themselves in your space, in a way that professional headshots alone can’t.
Whatever your modality or area of expertise, our lifestyle branding portraits will help you bring your brand to life.
How Lifestyle Branding Portraits Elevate Your Business
- Showcases Your Environment: The spaces where you work say a lot about your style and values. Whether it’s a light-filled yoga studio, a relaxed office environment, or an outdoor trail where you lead mindful walks, showing your environment helps your clients know what to expect and in turn, puts them at ease. We’ll go to your location to capture you in your element, for branding images that give context.
- Highlights Your Approach: Every wellness professional has a unique way of working. Are you calming and centered? Energetic and motivational? Lifestyle branding photography capture these nuances and help your future clients understand what it feels like to work with you.
- Brings Depth to Your Marketing: You need more than one good image to keep your digital presence updated. Your personal branding portraits provide a collection of images which can be used as content across your website, blog, Instagram, Pinterest, newsletters, and more. This makes your brand feel fresh and intentional, while giving your audience more opportunities to engage with your brand.
- Connects With the Right Clients: When your visuals reflect your personality and environment, they naturally speak to the clients who are aligned with your values and style. With thoughtful branding images, connection starts before the first appointment is ever booked.
Be You, With Us
At Teresa Porter Photography, we take a personalized and collaborative approach to lifestyle branding portraits. We specialize in working with wellness professionals who want their images to feel natural, sincere, and aligned with their work, but most of all, that feel true to them.
We’ll guide you through planning your wardrobe, choosing the right locations that reflect your business, and reflecting the personality at the heart of your wellness brand. The result is a collection of lifestyle branding portraits that you can use confidently across all platform to deliver your messaging.
If it’s time to refresh your personal branding portraits and bring your brand to life, we’re here to help.
by Yasmin Bruce | Jul 15, 2025 | Featured, Headshots, Personal Branding
Meet our friend, Kamini Wood. Kamini is a Human Potential Coach from Apex, NC and we have had the privilege of photographing Kamini and her family for a while now. We loved helping Kamini translate her business’ messaging in her personal branding photography and it’s a total honor. Kamini reached out to us when she needed updated headshots and branding portraits that felt true to her coaching style—gentle, warm, and approachable—while giving her versatile images to refresh her website, social media, and podcast marketing.
When you’re looking for a coach, making sure that you connect with them is everything. As a client, you want to know the person behind the brand – who are they? Are they trustworthy? Does their personality feel like the right fit for your journey? Those are the questions that Kamini wanted to answer when she reached out to Teresa Porter Photography. To make sure that she had refreshed branding photography that showed her clients who she is and how she can help them on their journey.
Personal Branding Photography is all about telling your brand’s story and letting us bring it to life. Are your branding portraits saying all that they need to?
Tailored Branding for a Personal Touch
To create the perfect setting for Kamini’s session, we rented a beautifully staged house in Raleigh, NC, that offered a variety of natural settings and backdrops. From cozy living room corners to a professional home office setup for posed podcasting portraits and a stunning patio bathed in natural light, each space provided the perfect canvas to reflect Kamini’s brand essence.
We focused on capturing Kamini in moments that felt authentic and relatable. Whether she was sitting at her laptop, recording a podcast with her microphone, or sipping coffee in a quiet moment, each image reflected the calm, supportive presence she brings to her coaching practice. Every branding portrait was carefully crafted to showcase her professionalism and warm personality.
One of the most personal touches was incorporating Kamini’s endearing family pet into her branding session. These candid moments of interaction with her dog added a heartwarming, down-to-earth layer to her small-business branding, and helped to remind her clients that the person guiding them through their personal growth is approachable, compassionate, and most importantly, real.
A Visual Story That Works Across Platforms
The final collection of branding images provided Kamini with a visual story that she could use across every platform, which is more than professional headshots alone could give. The cozy, relaxed personal branding portraits highlighted her nurturing coaching style, while the professional home office setup gave her polished options for her website, speaking engagements, and business platforms.
The natural light on the patio brought an added warmth to her branding photography, tying everything together with the calm, inviting feel that defines her work. Now, whether Kamini is updating her website, promoting a podcast episode, adding a blog post to her website, or posting on social media, she has images that not only look beautiful but also undeniably feel like her.
Whether posing for our camera or in a more candid moment, Kamini glowed in her branding photography.
Be You, With Us
At Teresa Porter Photography, we know that your small business shines when people connect with your story. Branding photography helps to visually tell that story in a way that reflects your personality, your business, and the uniqueness that you bring to it. If you’re looking for a personal branding photographer in the Raleigh area, look no further.
by Yasmin Bruce | Jul 8, 2025 | Featured, Headshots, Personal Branding
For entrepreneurs, strong visuals help build trust and create consistency across your brand. While polished professional headshots are a great place to start, having a wider range of branding images gives your business the flexibility to show up with clarity and confidence across every platform. Personal branding photography gives the opportunity for portraits and content that are tailored to your business, and can be used across your website, marketing materials, social media and more. They help your brand to to stay consistent, feel more personal, and make a strong impression wherever your audience connects with you.
If you are wondering where to begin, here are five types of branding images that we recommend every entrepreneur should have:
- A Classic, Professional Headshot: This is the image you’ll use again and again for your LinkedIn profile, speaking engagements, business cards, email signatures and, of course, the bio on your website. Professional headshots can be more formal, or cozy and relaxed, and sets the tone of who you are. It helps clients take you seriously from the start.
- Images On-site at your Workplace: Show what your work looks like in action. Whether you’re on a video call, using a tool of your trade, creating something by hand, consulting in-person with a client, teaching a class, or simply being in your workspace, these branding images offer a glimpse into your process. They help your audience visualize working with you and reinforces their sense of connection with you.
- Lifestyle Portraits: More relaxed than your traditional company headshots might be, lifestyle branding portraits allow your personality to come through. These are great for the “about” pages and photography for social media, where you can adopt a more casual tone that still feels cohesive with your brand.
- Product or Service Imagery: If your business involves products or any kind of service, high-quality visuals that show them are essential. These branding images visually tell the story of what you offer and how it helps your clients.
- Environmental Branding: This includes portraits captured in spaces that reflect your style and values. Whether that’s your home office, a favorite coffee shop, or a studio space, these portraits help add visual interest and keep your brand identity consistent.
For entrepreneurs, it’s so important that you have branding images that reflect your business and all the work you have put into it.
Why This Matters
Having a collection of website branding images means you’re never scrambling for the right portrait when it’s time to update your site, create a new offer, or schedule a social post. Just like how you might have your favorite sitcom queued up for when you can’t pick a new show to watch – these visuals are ready and waiting for when you need them. Branding images like these should always be true to your brand, keeping things consistent and make it easier for your audience to recognize, remember, and engage with what you do.
Be You, With Us
At Teresa Porter Photography, we create personal branding photography for entrepreneurs and business branding photography sessions that are designed to tell your story and meet your goals. Our headshots for entrepreneurs, website branding images and photography for social media are designed to work across your digital and print platforms, in a way that feels authentic to you and your business.
by Yasmin Bruce | Jul 1, 2025 | Featured, Headshots, Personal Branding
Meet our friends, Mackenzie and Pam. Mackenzie Sottini and Pamela Saxman lead Capital to Coast Realty, and know that strong first impressions build lasting client relationships. With offices in both Raleigh and Wilmington, they needed a collection of team headshots and branding portraits that captured their reach, reflected their lifestyle approach, and delivered a full year of content for everything from LinkedIn profile pictures to photography for social media and team bio pages. We previously had the honor of capturing senior portraits for Mackenzie’s daughter, Abby, and she loved them so much that she has since entrusted us with her business’ branding portraits, too. We could not be more thrilled!
In a competitive real estate market, like that of the busy Raleigh, North Carolina area and in beachy Wilmington, North Carolina, looking put-together online is crucial for instilling trust for future clients. Your clients are checking you out before they ever schedule a showing, and your branding portraits are speaking for you before you say a word. That’s why team headshots that reflect your brand’s personality, professionalism, and expertise are one of the most valuable marketing tools you can invest in.
From North Carolina’s capital city to its beaches, our team headshots session with Capital to Coast Realty showcased their relationship to the areas they operate in.
Tailored Branding in the Oak City
We designed a custom Branding Experience for the Capital to Coast team, with multiple locations (in Raleigh and the Wilmington area), to reflect the dual nature of their business and the areas that they cover. This session is our most comprehensive offering, created specifically for businesses who want an intentional, editorial collection of portraits that work across platforms and even printed material.
In Raleigh, we started with a styled shoot at a beautifully styled home in nearby Wake Forest. It was a gorgeous setting that mirrored the caliber of properties the team represents, with airy rooms, clean lines, and tons of natural light . From there, we moved into the city for a walking tour of some of the Triangle’s most photogenic locations. The Warehouse District, Boylan Heights, and Dorothea Dix Park gave us backdrops ranging from urban and edgy to soft and natural, with the Raleigh skyline tying everything together and adding specificity to their branding portraits.
Each agent received a professional headshot, and we captured team portraits in action, from candid connections to posed whole-team portraits. Our focus was to create images that communicate not just what they do, but how they work together and why future clients should trust them.
Bringing their Beachside Brand to Life
A few weeks later, we packed up and headed to Wilmington for our next branding photography session. We styled a morning in a sun-filled coastal home office, perfect for clean, modern website branding photography and casual lifestyle portraits. Then we took the entire team to nearby Carolina Beach, capturing employee headshots with wind in their hair and the ocean in the background.
We ended our time in Wilmington with a picture-perfect rooftop session for Mackenzie and Pam, as the business owners. Their founder portraits felt elegant, perfectly on-brand and reflected their close relationship. We loved creating realtor headshots for the entire Capital to Coast team, but this more intimate session with the business owners allowed us to create tailored personal branding photography, partnering with them to reflect the leadership behind their brand.
Whether you’re looking for company headshots or branding portraits that showcase your journey, we will bring your vision to life with beautiful portraits.
Headshots and Capital to Coast’s Visual Strategy
From Raleigh’s glittering skyline to Wilmington’s sandy beach scenes, our on-location branding sessions gave the Capital to Coast team a comprehensive collection of portraits they can use throughout the year. Their final gallery included:
- Professionally edited individual team headshots for each agent,
- Personal branding portraits for Mackenzie and Pam,
- Group portraits that feel real, warm, and make a statement,
- Casual, content-ready images for newsletters, social posts and print work,
- On-brand, location-specific real estate branding images for both Raleigh and Wilmington marketing campaigns
- A collection of website branding images that align with their clean, modern aesthetic
This is what we mean when we say business storytelling. We create branding portraits aren’t just beautiful, but that also let clients see your values and the story behind your business.
Be You, With Us
At Teresa Porter Photography, we specialize in headshot and branding photography and corporate team photography that feels anything but generic. If you’re still using that one good headshot from several years ago (you know the one), or trying to crop group shots into your Linkedin profile picture, you’re overdue for a refresh.
Whether you’re a solo entrepreneur or running a multi-location firm, we’ll design a session that fits your brand, your goals, and your audience. With the right branding photography, you’re not just updating your look, but instead, you’re giving yourself and your team a tool that opens doors before a single email is sent.
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