The best portrait photographs show us “what it means to be alive, offering solace and insight, inspiration, and understanding. The photographer pries loose those things that words can’t describe that ineffable essence that makes a person who they are. They snatch it out of the ether and passes it along to us. It’s magic.”

Aubrey Chandler demonstrates that magic with every photo shoot, allowing her subjects to show their true selves to create and elevate their brand.

Chandler is a multi-talented entrepreneur who, initially recognized for her talent in acting and modeling, ventured into private aviation, real estate and then the world of entertainment, all of which are successful ventures. She has worked with Shaquille O’Neal, Snoop Dogg, Alicia Keyes, Chayanne, Ricky Martin, and many others. But it was when she picked up a camera that her career expanded to helping A-listers and celebrities discover the essence of their brand through her lens. Her photographs have graced many magazine covers including Rolling Stone, People, and Marie Claire. One of her photos became a three-story billboard in Times Square.

Chandler’s interest in photography started by accident when her compact Canon Elf was stolen. She used her tax refund to buy a professional camera, and invited her friend, actress, Jamie Bernadette, over for a day to take pictures. It was then then that Chandler, with no training in photography, found out “how happy it made her feel to bring out the beauty in others.” That day changed her life.

Chandler shared with me that “the secret to making her subjects shine is making them feel like the most empowered person in the room. For me, it’s all in the eyes – that’s what captivates me in an image. I love capturing the soul.”

Chandler goes on to say that she works to ensure the models feel their best and are genuinely enjoying themselves. “This positive energy is evident in the images. It’s truly contagious and entices the consumers to want that feeling too.”

Using photography in your marketing is the “perfect place to tell your brand’s story and explain your “Why” to establish an emotional bond with your consumer. Utilizing photography, specifically to provide a voice for your brand, helps create a visual marker for your brand so that it can be recognized immediately by the consumer.”

A strong brand image makes the product or person stand out. “Well communicated brand values can shape the customer experience almost as much as the product itself.”

Chandler credits her success by capturing authentic moments and creating a positive atmosphere during shoots. “My background in acting and modeling helps me connect with subjects, ensuring they feel comfortable and happy. This genuine energy translates into compelling images. Additionally, my meticulous attention to lighting and settings enhances the storytelling aspect of my work. Building strong, genuine relationships and drawing inspiration from my late mentor, Joy Nash, have also been crucial. Combining technical skill with emotional intelligence allows me to create impactful, relatable imagery that resonates with audiences.”

Chandler uses the connection she establishes with her clients along with her business savvy to create this emotional bond with the consumer and elevate the brand. “Creating a brand with an emotional bond through a photo requires showcasing the product in a relatable way for the audience.”

Chandler’s work with a skincare line that targeted a health-conscious, organic-minded crowd, used models that reflected that demographic. The use of appropriate lighting, strategic product placement in the right settings, and selecting the right publications all significantly impacted the branding. “By aligning these elements with the target audience’s values and lifestyle, a photo can effectively create a powerful emotional connection and reinforce brand loyalty.”

One of her clients, a Latina celebrity who appears on television almost daily, wanted to expand her brand and reach a larger audience. Chandler discussed with her how each magazine has a unique style, leading her client to understand the need for more personal editorial photographs, beyond the typical TV host or spokesperson shots.

Another client “is a male celebrity who was recently in the press, not by choice, but due to the drama surrounding his A-list ex-wife who brought him back into the spotlight.” Chandler is marketing him as “the hottest, most eligible Latin bachelor, which he truly is!”

A testament to her talent, Chandler recently solidified her reputation as a visionary connector and business savant by orchestrating one of her client’s debuts on the prestigious TED Talk platform.

Chandler’s business success stems from her ability to build long-standing professional relationships. “Throughout my career, I have collaborated with a diverse range of individuals, including celebrities, entrepreneurs, and motivational figures. I have cultivated not only professional relationships but also genuine friendships with celebrities, editors and others. When I first started photography, I collaborated with some fantastic brands, which led to opportunities such as shoot a cosmetics campaign for Sephora and a campaign for L’Occitane. These collaborations resulted from referrals from existing friendships.”

“I’m a spontaneous person,” Chandler added, “Who thrives on learning as I go. I adjust and adapt along the way. I’m constantly tweaking and experimenting. I believe in my clients’ brands and I’m willing to take risks. I introduce my clients to innovative branding strategies, and I get their image or product in front of the masses with a strategic marketing approach.”

Bonnie Marcus, M.ED, is the author of Not Done Yet! How Women Over 50 Regain Their Confidence and Claim Workplace Power and The Politics of Promotion: How High Achieving Women Get Ahead and Stay Ahead. An executive coach and speaker, Bonnie is also host of the podcast, Badass Women At Any Age.

RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA, UNITED STATES, June 14, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ — Sarah Anne Wilson Photography is excited to announce the launch of its Corporate Onsite Headshot service, designed to bring professional headshot photography directly to businesses in Raleigh and Cary, North Carolina. This service allows employees to have their professional headshots taken at their place of work, offering convenience without sacrificing the quality and personalized touch Sarah Anne Wilson Photography is known for.

Sarah Anne Wilson, the creative force behind the studio, shared her thoughts on this new venture: “We understand that time is a valuable asset in today’s fast-paced corporate environment. Our Corporate Onsite Headshot service is our response to that challenge. We’re bringing our unique, relaxed approach to the workplace, making professional headshots more accessible and enjoyable for everyone.”

This service aims to provide a solution for companies seeking to enhance their professional image. It eliminates the need for employees to travel to a photography studio, thereby saving time and streamlining the process. The studio’s team will set up a fully equipped mobile studio at the client’s location, ensuring that each photograph is of the highest quality and reflects the professionalism of the individual and the company.

At Sarah Anne Wilson Photography, the focus has always been on creating a relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere, and this philosophy extends to their onsite service. Their approach is designed to put employees at ease, resulting in headshots that are both professional and personable.

The Corporate Headshot service is ideal for various professional needs, such as headshots for company websites, LinkedIn profiles, and marketing materials. It’s a versatile option for businesses of all sizes, providing a tailored solution for companies looking to update their professional imagery.

Flexibility is a key feature of this service, with Sarah Anne Wilson Photography offering full-day or half-day bookings to accommodate the size of any team. The package includes individual headshots, group shots, and a pre-session consultation to discuss specific requirements and preferences.

The studio’s commitment to excellence has earned praise from numerous clients, who highlight the comfortable photoshoot experience, Sarah’s professionalism, and the superior quality of the headshots.

Based in Cary, North Carolina, Sarah Anne Wilson Photography has become a respected name in the field of professional headshot photography. With over six years of experience, the studio has helped numerous individuals and businesses project a confident and professional image.

For more information or to book a Corporate Onsite Headshot session, businesses are encouraged to contact Sarah Anne Wilson Photography directly. This service is a step forward in making professional photography more accessible and enjoyable, ensuring that every corporate headshot reflects the professionalism and uniqueness of the individuals and teams they represent.

Sarah Anne Wilson
Sarah Anne Wilson Photography
email us here
Visit us on social media:
Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Other

AL So many opportunities . . .

DB And then he just shoved it all in a
closet and left home. When I became
interested in photography, my friend
asked me if I wanted the equipment.
I did, so my friend showed up at my
house with this small darkroom kit.
And just like when my band played in
our living room, my mother allowed me
after hours to set up a darkroom in her
kitchen!

AL In her kitchen! So she had to clean
up after dinner so you could pull out
your trays.

DB Exactly. All she said was, “Make
sure you clean up before I come down
in the morning, and I don’t wanna smell
anything.” So I would work around the
clock into the night and through the
early morning hours. Then I would stop
and spray some Glade air freshener,
knock everything down, and put everything under the sink before my mom
came down. While my parents didn’t
take me and my brother to museums
growing up, they were fully supportive of our creative pursuits, even though,
especially when I became interested in
photography, they had no idea how we
were going to turn these into something practical. All they knew was you
could be a wedding photographer.

AL Right.

DB To my parents, my options included
photographing babies or having a
portrait studio. They could not understand the context in which I was looking
at photography, but they supported it.

AL I think the earliest works of
photography that impressed you
were done in the studio, right? By
photographers like Richard Avedon
and Irving Penn.

DB Mike Disfarmer.

AL And Mike Disfarmer.

DB I saw work by these photographers in the ’70s. Early in my career,
I was making photographs in the street
with a small 35 mm camera, and yet
pictures by those photographers made
a strong impression on me, even with
no conscious sense that I might be
interested in making those same kinds
of pictures. I think what attracted me
to that work was that the subjects were
ordinary people, like Disfarmer’s folk
from Herber Springs, Arkansas.

AL Those are extraordinary.

DB Penn did the Small Trades
pictures. These were of ordinary people
in their workaday clothes who he
brought to the studio. And then Avedon
had a range of subjects. For the most
part, the work made by photographers
who I started to look at in the ‘70s was
interesting. The subjects, by and large,
were ordinary people, which clued me
into this idea that ordinary people could
be the subject in the making of resonant photographs.

AL But it was clear in your mind that
some of those photographers, like
Disfarmer, were not art photographers.
Can you talk about encountering Roy
DeCarava’s work in Langston Hughes’s
project? You realized that DeCarava’s
photographs weren’t photojournalism
and that the kind of work you were
doing actually could become art. It
could be self-motivated, and it could
have intentions, and it could be poetic
and powerful.

DB Oh yeah, DeCarava and Langston
Hughes’s The Sweet Flypaper of Life.
It’s interesting because early on I had
absolutely no sense of genre. This
idea that there was photojournalism,
that there was fine art, that there
was commercial photography . . . I just
gravitated toward what I thought
were interesting pictures. When you
think about it, some of Irving Penn’s
photographs look very much like
Mike Disfarmer’s photographs, even
though they were working with very
different purposes.

AL That’s very true.

DB Disfarmer was the neighborhood
photographer from Herber Springs, and
Penn was a highly successful commercial and art photographer working in
New York City. But for very different
reasons they both end up with these
ordinary people standing in front of
the camera. For Penn, it was a project.
For Disfarmer, it was a job; it was the
service that Disfarmer provided to the
community. For Avedon, it was his
own personal work, the thing that he
did commercially, but it was definitely
a project in a way that it wasn’t for
Disfarmer. But then DeCarava was a
particularly important revelation for me,
even though I didn’t get the full impact
of his work until I was able to stand in
front of it.

ALIn front of a real print.

DB The Sweet Flypaper of Life was a
very inexpensive publication.

AL There’s so much darkness that
doesn’t reproduce well in the book. I’m
thinking of Black skin in particular. The
shadows are also so important.

DB Those were not fine reproductions in The Sweet Flypaper of Life, at
least not in the monographic sense.
But I was intrigued by DeCarava’s
photographs for the fact that they
were interestingly made pictures
that were clearly not of the Gordon
Parks–documentary type. They were
also not photojournalism. They didn’t
seem to serve any function besides a
self-expressive one, which was prob-
ably why DeCarava had such a difficult
time getting that work published. And
then he showed it to Langston Hughes,
who said, “Well, why don’t you let me
write some text for these pictures?
Maybe I can get a publisher interested.”
The photographs were highly expressive in a subjective way, and they were
pictures of Black people in Harlem
in the 1950s. This idea of using the
camera expressively and doing that
with subjects who, again, were ordinary
subjects, ordinary African Americans,
didn’t make The Sweet Flypaper of Life
an easily publishable book. Eventually,
Simon & Schuster published it in
1955. I was impressed by DeCarava’s
vocabulary, both his formal vocabulary
and later, when I was able to stand in
front of the work and see, his material
vocabulary.

AL The medium of the work.

DB The way this man manipulated
the medium of photography in a highly
subjective and expressive way was also
a part of the work’s narrative about the
Black subject. DeCarava had a profound
influence on me, and he remains so
important to me. He was a Black
photographer who was working expressively within the medium rather than for
publication. There was no apparent use
for this work other than for it to be on
a wall in a gallery or a museum and for
someone to stand in front of it and have
a different sense of what a photograph
could be and of how the world might
be reshaped through that experience.
DeCarava became a singular presence for me, in a similar way that John
Coltrane was musically. Between the
two of them, they’ve inspired and kept
me on track all these years.

Photographer and writer Miles Astray’s piece “F L A M I N G O N E” received honors from both the jury and the public vote in the AI category of the prestigious 1839 Awards despite the award-winning image of a flamingo with a missing head not being AI-generated.

Recently, we have been talking a lot about AI and what it means for the industry’s creators, artists, and other creative professionals. Due to its implications for the future of content creation, Miles Astray submitted a genuine photograph into an AI category to stress the continuing relevance of human-made content. Surprisingly, this photo is the first authentic image to win an AI award.

Lately, AI-generated images have increasingly won photo competitions, even in categories they weren’t supposed to be, showcasing what the technology is capable of. “I wanted to demonstrate that nature still surpasses machines in terms of imagination and that real work from real creatives still holds significant value,” Astray explained.

The photograph was nominated by an international jury with members from institutions such as the New York Times, Phaidon Press, Getty Images, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Christie’s, and Maddox Gallery. It was shortlisted for both the jury’s award and the people’s choice award. Ultimately, it secured the people’s choice award and was recognized by the jury’s winners. 

 “We’ve all seen a flamingo, but have you ever seen a flamingone? Only an AI could make that up. Or did I just make that up?” wrote Astray. “The scene’s only prompt is an itch, followed by a belly scratch, which explains the flamingo’s missing head. I acknowledge leading the jury astray, but I think that they are professionals who might find that this jab at AI and its ethical implications outweighs the ethical implications of deceiving the viewer, which, of course, is ironic because that is what AI does.”

UKMVA winner, Wouter Stoter, directs Friedberg’s latest music video for their new single ‘The Greatest’, an ode to street photography set in the radiant Peckham. The video explores identity through Anna, the lead singer, and her quest to become The Greatest by swapping outfits, items (even boyfriends) with random strangers. As she layers not only clothes but also different identities, she finds herself gradually losing her own.

Milo Beyts, producer, added, “I’m hugely grateful to Friedberg, their label and management, John Moule and the Snapper team for the privilege to work on this wonderful video. It was a blast from start to finish, I’m so proud of what we and the crew achieved.” 

Wouter Stoter, director, added, “With love and respect to the people of Rye Lane, true home of The Greatest.”

We don’t all have the equipment to capture stunning photos of rare wildlife or the elusive Northern Lights, but something that will feature heavily on pretty much all of our camera rolls is food.

Maybe not quite to this standard, though. The Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year awards strive to showcase the world’s best food photography and film, and it has just announced the winners for 2024. 

Claiming the coveted title is Chinese photographer Zhonghua Yang, with their shot of a woman preparing for the Lunar New Year in the rural area of Xiangshan, Zhejiang, entitled ‘Red Bean Paste Balls’. 

‘This wonderful, perfectly balanced image is full of light, shadow, mystery and poignancy’, said competition founder Caroline Kenyon, about the photo, ‘The food is exquisitely made, its circular shapes contrasting with the angularity of the fretwork screens, through which the light pours. Meanwhile, the woman who has made the food, weary, carries in yet another tray. Her role is to labour and to serve, while the guests party and enjoy.’

And it’s quite a mesmerising shot – you can take a look at it below, along with the other stunning snaps that were recognised in 2024’s competition. 

‘Red Bean Paste Balls’ by Zhonghua Yang 

‘Let Them Eat Cake!’ Lynne Kennedy

‘B.L.T. Contemplation’ Delaney McQuown 

‘Harvest in Volnay, Burgundy’ Thierry Gaudillère

‘Les Liens du Vin’ Jonathan Thevenet

‘In the Tank During Alcoholic Fermentation’ Guenhaël Kessler

‘Pork, Laughter, and Red Wine’ Virginia Morán

‘New Year in Old Cave Dwelling’ Ren Xiuting

‘Mangrove Fisherman’ Teo Chin Leong

‘Hanging Buri (Yellowtail)’ Matteo Alberti

And you can have a look at last year’s winners right here. 

Stay in the loop: sign up to our free Time Out Travel newsletter for the latest travel news and the best stuff happening across the world.

Carving a niche in a particular field on the coast is something that most entrepreneurs endeavour to achieve, although those that have succeeded are few and far between. However, there is an elite few that have made their mark, not only on the Costa, but all over the world, creating a reputation as a leader in their field. One of these is Estepona-based photographer Michelle Chaplow, a much sought-after hotel photographer who has spent more than 20 years photographing international travel destinations, along with some of the world’s finest luxury and historic hotels. Michelle says that she loves to go beyond the “conventional viewpoint” to capture the very essence of the subject: one only has to view her stunning photographs to see what she means by this.

Born in Durham, Michelle, who has won numerous awards for her architectural photography, attended Manchester University, where she studied food science and technology. After working in the food industry, a job she enjoyed because she loves to “travel and stay in great hotels”, Michelle, and her husband, Chris, decided to take a year out to backpack around Latin America. This was when she discovered her love for the camera.

Michelle and Chris came to Spain in 1991 and they set up andalucia.com, an award-winning website offering extensive information about the region.

“My love for travel took me to photography, and when I arrived in Andalucía and saw the light and colours, my passion for the camera really began,” Michelle tells SUR in English.

Recognised by the Spanish ministry of commerce for promoting Spain, Michelle is known for her vivid images of Andalucía and its customs, and her photographs have adorned the pages of countless newspapers, magazines and books.

“My career has been divided into two. First the travel photography, and then the hotel work, which came much later. When I came to Spain, I kind of became an expert for travel magazines. I won a big contract for the Spanish tourist board, photographing the beaches from Alicante to Huelva,” she says.

After spending an average of 125 nights per year in hotels, Michelle decided to start Hotel Essence Photography in 2010.

“At that time, the hotels had brochures, but they did not represent what I could see and feel in the hotel. I decided to not just photograph the hotel, but to capture the essence of the hotel, which is very important,” she explains.

Prestigious hotel chains

Her work has since been commissioned and published by prestigious hotel chains such as Paradores de España, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, and the Mandarin Oriental, among many others. She has also snapped numerous independently-owned hotels, the exteriors of Unesco-recognised buildings and Michelin-star restaurants.

Although based on the coast, Michelle works mainly outside of Spain, one aspect of her work that she really enjoys.

“Wherever I am is my home. I love to travel and I like to experience new places. I relish every moment and try to immerse myself. I love to people watch. The whole experience is my passion,” she says.

However, Michelle’s work involves a lot more than travelling to luxury hotels and enjoying the delights of the locations. She can spend anywhere up to six months planning the shoot, and approximately six weeks in post-production.

“It’s not just myself working, I have a crew of between three and ten depending on the job. We have a 20-point checklist to make sure the room is impeccable for the shoot. There is housekeeping ready, and there is camera ready,” she explains.

As well as hotel photography, Michelle also presents keynote speeches on the subject around the world, which is another appealing aspect of her work, because, as she points out, “I love sharing my experiences, because life has been very good to me, and it’s good to share this knowledge.”

“The number one thing, as in any profession, is that you must be totally passionate, because there are long days and a lot of hard work. If you don’t have that passion, you can’t see it through. Taking the photographs is only about ten per cent of my work,” Michelle says.