Melissa Dusette is a personal branding photographer from Ann Arbor Michigan. Today we talk about what is personal branding photography and how we can add it to the services we offer.

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In This Episode You'll Learn:

• The unconventional way Melissa got her start in photography

• What aspect of photography Melissa struggled with most to learn

• What is personal branding photography and why its important

• Whats the difference between a portrait or headshot session and a personal branding photography session

• What Melissa looks for to nail her personal branding sessions

• How Melissa had to make do with the gear she had to complete a job

Premium Members Also Learn:

• How clients find Melissa to book a personal branding session

• How we can add personal branding photography services to increase our revenue

• How to create packages for personal branding photography

• What 3 questions you can ask to bring your clients more business and build them out a marketing plan

Resources:

• Melissa Dusette’s website

• Melissa Dusette on Instagram

• Melissa Dusette on Facebook

Did you enjoy this episode? Check out more recent interviews with other great guests!

Full Episode Transcription:

Disclaimer: The transcript was transcribed electronically by Temi.com and may contain errors that do not reflect accurately what the speaker said. Because of this, please do not quote this automated transcript.

Raymond: 00:00 Welcome to the beginner photography podcast. Today we're talking about personal branding photography, so let's get into it. Intro: 00:10 Welcome to the beginner photography podcast, a weekly podcast for those who believe that moments matter most and that a beautiful photo is more than just a sum of its settings, a show for those who want to do more with the gear they have to take better photos today and now your host Raymond Hatfields.

Raymond: 00:28 Oh, welcome back to this episode of the beginner photography podcast. I am your host Raymond Hatfield and we have a really interesting interview for you today, but I cannot wait to get into some really, really interesting stuff. But first, something fun. I want to give a quick shout out this week to Tyler Jarvis for leaving the podcast, a five star iTunes review. Tyler said a decade ago I was shooting with a Nikon, the 40 I had gotten rid of it because I needed the money. I remember thinking that I'd come back to photography. I've always had that kind of photographers mindset when shooting, but never really pursued it. Well this Christmas, my girlfriend and I both got each other cameras and we're getting back into it. My commutes. It feels so much more valuable. Now. Your guests have been invaluable resource asking questions that I had, two ones I haven't. It just seems like there's answers left and right in each episode when I get a little further into my journey, there's no doubt that I'll be going premium.

Raymond: 01:37 Thank you for all that you do know Tyler. Thank you for all that you do for leaving a review on iTunes. I got to tell you it's one of the easiest things that you can do to help show your support for the podcast. And again, I truly do appreciate it. And when you are ready to join the premium membership, be sure to come back to this interview because there is really so much in this one right here just for premium members who are looking to make money with their camera. So this week, Tyler, when you become a premium member, you are going to hear so much. I interviewed Melissa Dusette, who is a branding personal branding photographer. And as a person, as a premium member, you will hear how clients find Melissa to book personal branding photography and who it is that they are. You know, who books something like this, how we can add personal branding photography easily to our services to increase our revenue, how to create different packages for personal branding photography, which is entirely different than wedding and portrait photography.

Raymond: 02:44 And this was my favorite. The three questions Melissa shares that you can ask your clients that will bring your clients more business and create a marketing plan for them. I mean that is massive right there when you that double resource photographer and come up with that marketing plan for them. Oh great. Just real, real, real in depth stuff this a week, but you can't miss. So if you want to hear it, become a premium member by heading over to beginner photography, podcast.com and clicking that premium membership button at the top of the page. You're going to get access to all of Melissa's answers to today's questions as well as past guests answers for their questions as well and how they become a better and more successful photographer. So with that, let's go ahead and get on into this week's interview with Melissa Dusette. You know what? I did not, I did not write out an interview for a, I'm sorry, I did not write out an introduction for you, Melissa, because one thing that I thought was so interesting when I was just doing some when I was trying to figure out who it was that you were, everything that I found was very fascinating.

Raymond: 03:59 But I also figured that if I shared it right here in the beginning, I would be giving too much of your story away and I didn't want to do that. So I figured my introduction for you is going to say, Hey, guess what, today we're talking to Melissa Dusettet. She's a personal branding photographer based in Michigan. Is that right? What did I say that? Okay. Yeah. And so we're just going to start there. We're recording. Melissa, thank you for coming on the podcast. Why don't you go ahead and start off with letting me know by letting everybody who's listening know who you are and how you got started in photography.

Melissa Dusette: 04:34 Sure. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. As you said I'm currently a personal brand photographer. I'm currently in Ann Arbor, Michigan, kind of serving the, the region. But I'm also working in training photographers all over the country. But I, I kind of had a strange, kind of circular nonconventional way that I, I kinda got started in this personal brand photography journey. I actually went to school for anthropology and I was I went to grad school for anthropology. I was studying human behavior, human evolution. And then right after that I started work in museums and I actually was working at the field museum in collections, actually in entomology. So I was surrounded by insects and that's actually where I received my amazing professional photography training. I was actually taking micro photography of really, really tiny insects and really tiny snails as part of the field museums work towards digitizing all of their collections.

Melissa Dusette: 05:55 And you know, digitizing these collections with all of these professional photography tools that we had there. It allowed, you know, researchers all over the world to download these amazing photographs and actually, you know, proceed with their research without actually having to see the actual specimens of the insects and collections, which obviously helps them. It helps us because we didn't have to, you know, have wear and tear on our specimens and you know, all of that, all of that was awesome and I really loved what I was doing, but I was really taken by the photography aspect of it. And after that I moved to LA and I got a job at the natural history museum and the Libria tarpits and I became their branding person in the lab. So I, in my, in my official job title, you know, I was working on their collection.

Melissa Dusette: 06:56 I was taking photographs and everything, but I was also picking up some of their Twitter work. I had my own hashtag tarpits Melissa. And, and I just became really fascinated with how, how a company kind of brands themselves. And, and along that journey I also realized that all of this amazing background information I have in anthropology has kind of fueled me and steered me to see things with this different, different lens. Right. and then flash forward a couple of years I ended up moving to Ann Arbor with my family and I picked up my camera again and I started the, the, you know, regular family photography slog, you know, trying to get clients, you know, there's 60,000 family photographers in the area, you know, really hard to set up a reputation as a new photographer when you moved to a new city. All of those challenges.

Melissa Dusette: 08:05 And then I just kind of had an epiphany and I was at home with my toddler still at home with my toddler and my day job. Currently, I'm obviously not at museums with my toddler. My current day job is in marketing and I am actually doing branding and a logo design and social media strategy and all of these things during my day job. And I realized, wait a second, this thing's, these things all go together. And I have a unique background in photography. I learned in a very technical, precise way. And I also have this unique kind of human lens in which I see people and I see the world because of my background in academics. And then I kind of folded that into the marketing that I was doing and I realized that not only should I be getting into personal brand photography, but that I may be uniquely suited to kind of help people understand these basics of marketing that maybe they wouldn't really have undertaken before. Cause I know, I know I talked to a lot of photographers and I talk about marketing and their eyes get as big as quarters. And then maybe just start breathing a little heavily. And, and I just, I just want everybody to know that it's, it's not that complicated. But I do think that it's important to learn some of the aspects of that if you want to get into branding. Photography.

Raymond: 09:41 Yeah. So like you said, marketing is one of those things that people either love or they hate. And it seems like you know, a lot of people who I talked to hate it because it is very scary. You know, you're not formally educated on this stuff. And I'm really excited to talk about that, but I'm also, I, before we get to that, I really want to kinda expand more upon those early days of, of your photography journey. Because I mean school for anthropology, like this is what you went to school for. And typically when people go to school for that, it's like they have this idea that this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. And then you got in there, you were handed a camera to document, you know collections if that's the right word, and then you fell in love with this new thing. Tell, talk to me a little bit more about that. What was it about photography that made you think, like, you know what, the past few years of education was good and all, but I really loved this thing.

Melissa Dusette: 10:42 Well, so the field museum itself is my favorite place on earth. I still walk in the door every day. I walked in the door, I had this big smile plastered on my face. But as I was kinda going through the day to day of it, I realized that there's a lot of work to be done in collections, but it's not where the field is going. The field is going towards digitization because we're living in this interconnected world that's only becoming more and more connected. Right. and I was sitting, I was stationed at this $90,000 photography station, right? Doing stacks of photos with this amazing camera. And I had this amazing photography teacher who was teaching me all of these very technical things. And I, it's like my brain got into sewn. And I think just something about photography really resonated with my, not specifically my interests but with my personal personal style of my workflows with my the way my brain works, processing tasks, you know, I would sit down and start processing all of these images and like six hours had passed.

Melissa Dusette: 12:12 And I just found that that was really efficient, that, that I just have an innate understanding that made my work a little faster. And I really got to enjoy that and I think that's what really resonated with me at first. And caught my attention that, Hey, I really, really am enjoying this photography thing. And then when I moved on to the tar pits in, in LA, that kind of became my choice and I brought it up to them. And they said, absolutely, you know, if you want to take photos, take videos, go for it. You know, we'd love that. And, and I was really happy doing that too. And when I moved to Michigan and I had my toddler then it was boom photography. Obviously I had this little little person running around me for inspiration, you know? And I found that myself taking photos every day and I think it was at that point that I really, really fell in love. So first I kind of felt like I had this, it worked really well with my brain and then kind of after the fact when I got here, I realized that I really love doing it and now I really, what I really love doing is realizing that I have this unique perspective that I can teach others and I really am starting to really love that aspect of it too, you know?

Raymond: 13:46 Yeah, of course. Of course. Yeah, I completely understand that. So when you first, when you first were given access to this large table of photography, right? Like all this great equipment. Yeah. You said that it was a very technical skill to learn and you right, when it comes to photography, some people get overwhelmed math, lots of numbers, inverse, square law, like all these things. Right. For you, what would you say was something that you struggled with most to understand?

Melissa Dusette: 14:21 I think for me, I was obviously not taking pictures of human subjects. And so my challenges were a little different as I was learning the industry and the tools as, as opposed to a lot of people. But I was really struggling, I think the most with focus, honestly. And, and even when, you know, we had our, our Canon Mark, you know, sitting up on this, this really ornate stand and I'm taking these photos that are going to be stacked together to take this image of this fly or something, I realized that focus was such a huge, huge part of, of the importance of photography, but also one of the trickiest to learn because you pick up any other photo or any other camera, or you pick up your iPhone and it'll just automatically focus it for you. And I think a lot of times you can take that for granted and you think to yourself, this is just going to be easy. I'm just going to focus it. I can see that it's focused, you know? And then later I look at my picture on the computer screen and I what happens, right. And, and honestly, it's something that I w I still work on. It's something that I still work on it. I think it's probably my technical, gosh, why don't I have that yet? Kind of, kind of challenge that I still work on.

Raymond: 15:53 So when you were focusing, let's go back to that fly example saying that you're doing a stack just so that, I don't know if things are different in the museum world, but just are you saying that you were taking like multiple photos at different focusing distance to be able to edit together so that the whole photo appeared in focus?

Melissa Dusette: 16:11 Yeah. So these, these, these insects were, you know, millimeters in length, right. And width. And we were taking I'm trying to remember 30 to 50 photographs of every insects. Wow. And we just had this, I forgot what it was. I forgot the stacking program that we were using the name of it. But you program it in you program in the size of the insect or S or whatever it is. You're digitizing and then it will automatically step the camera down for you just incrementally and automatically boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah. And then you just automatically get a folder of images that almost look the same, but in, at the very end of it, you know, the bugs head is in focus and at the very other end of it, you know, his legs are in focus. So it was amazing to see how it all worked together.

Raymond: 17:09 So when, when did you first start using the camera on, like you said, human subjects?

Melissa Dusette: 17:17 I would say kind of formally as, as a photographer. I started, it was 2013 that I started that.

Raymond: 17:26 So how long after after all of this training to figure out how to insect bugs where you now taking the camera in front of people?

Melissa Dusette: 17:35 It only took about two years. Yeah. About two years for me to get myself comfortable with the focus scene and all of the other technical aspects of it. And then I started bringing it over and photographing people. Yeah. And I love, the other thing I love doing is photographing kids. That's my other love.

Raymond: 17:58 So obviously going from a stationary camera to now having to move the camera around with you, especially with a moving subject such as kids. Did you find that you had to completely relearn how to focus or was there another aspect that was even more challenging to understand?

Melissa Dusette: 18:14 When I moved from photographing bugs to kids, the biggest change was lighting because now I didn't have this stationary light that automatically shot down for me. These kids were not only outside and varying shade and sun environments and different weather, but they were running around themselves, you know. And I think that was definitely the biggest change. Focusing I, I was still okay on but, but I think the lighting was the biggest change. Raymond: 18:49 Yeah. Do you have any tips for anybody who's listening right now who may also struggle with the, with the lighting when photographing their kids?

Melissa Dusette: 18:58 I think take, take, take more photos than you think you're going to need. I always shoot on continuous when I'm photographing kids. And also make sure you look at their faces and try to catch them. I love when it's cloudy outside. To me, that's my perfect lighting environment because they don't have to squint. There's no harsh light on their faces. But if you can't and it happens to be a sunny day or you have some harsh light in your environment, I would make sure that the sun is behind them.

Raymond: 19:37 Gotcha. Good, good, good. So then their faces free of any harsh light, directly

Melissa Dusette: 19:42 Free of harsh light and they're not squinting. And, and also if you're taking pictures, make sure you if you're taking pictures underneath trees, you want to make sure you do a double check that you don't have patches of leaf shade, you know, kind of modeling their faces. Yeah.

Raymond: 20:01 Right. That's a good tip. That's a good tip. So let's go ahead and kind of shift into a branding photography, right? Sure, sure. Let's start off with just the most basic question, which is, what is branding photography and why is it, why is it important?

Melissa Dusette: 20:15 Yeah, that's a great question. So to even kind of back it up even more personal branding in general as just basically the way you present yourself mostly online, but as a person, as an individual or as a business it, it encompasses, you know your style, your personality what you do, what you stand for. And it also stands for your passion and, and also stands for what your goal is. Basically. personal brand photography as a niche is getting very, very popular right now. It's just, it's, it's as big up and coming thing because everybody is going digital. More and more people are working remotely. More and more people are working freelance or contractor gigs or side gigs, side hustles. And you are becoming more and more your own company, your own element, your own person.

Melissa Dusette: 21:28 And so it becomes more and more important to curate the image of you based on your goals and who you are. And one of the most important aspects of personal branding and personal brand photography is to know who you want to attract with those images. Now when I have a personal branding client and let's say they're like a small business and they want personal branding images one of the biggest things I'm going to sit down with them and talk about is who is their ideal customer? And even for an individual, you want to think, you know, am I looking for a job? Do I need to curate myself for my LinkedIn profile? Do I need to curate myself on my Instagram feed? And what exactly am I saying about myself? Do I want to communicate to people that I'm professional or trendy or an artist? Or that my passion is saving animals, you know, whatever it's going to be. It's kind of the distillation of all those important elements of your identity into this visual format that communicates that. And personal brand photography takes all those elements for a client and sets up images that convey all those image convey is all of those elements. But for a particular audience of the clients to achieve, you know, a sales goal or more business or more brand awareness or whatever it becomes.

Raymond: 23:08 You know, I had never, never done any sort of like personal brand photography or anything like that. But I think just very recently there was that, what was it, the wasn't a challenge but the whatever, like the Dolly Parton challenge or whatever where it was like, you know, here's what your profile picture would be for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and then Tinder or whatever it is. And it was something that you just said there that made me realize it was like, the reason why those photos are different is because your audience is different. The people who you're talking to is completely different. And and yeah, just just made me think about that cause I, I would always think like, to me, I would I, I had always had this idea of like, well, if you keep all of your you know, profile pictures like the same, then there's some sort of like brain consistency there. But it makes sense to think about who it is that you're trying to attract. You know, are you trying to attract clients or are you just trying to look trendy? On a, on Instagram. Yeah. That's very good. That's very good. So so that brings me to my next question, which is how is personal brand photography different than just a traditional portrait session or even a headshot?

Melissa Dusette: 24:25 Yeah, yeah. A traditional portrait session is gonna sit you down or set you up wherever you are. And the goal is to get good images of you as a person. It's not really set up to convey any kind of message. It's not set up to have any external forces of viewing it for any specific goal. It's just, and another way to phrase it, you know to make you look pretty, which is a fantastic goal and lots of people want it. I have family portraits made, you know, it's kind of just a way to memorialize something in time, right. This is what my family looked like and 2019, you know, and that's, that's awesome. A head shot is used mostly in businesses and acting obviously, but it's, it's created as a more of a closeup of your facial features and your smile on your expressions and kind of get a sense of your physical, your physical your physical facial features and the way you emote.

Melissa Dusette: 25:45 Now with personal brand photography. Usually the camera is back to way out from there and it's going to capture it's going to capture you in different outfits that talk to your customers. It's going to capture specific elements of your personality that you want to communicate to customers. It's also going to be shot in lots of different locations that may or may not be unexpected, but that's also to kind of communicate to your customers. So I took one of my hashtags is, is no more coffee shop photos. A coffee shop photo is not a good branding photography photo. You know, a person sitting at their desk, at their computer, not a good branding photo, you know, be a

Raymond: 26:40 Good branding photo for a, now I know that, that what we're talking about here is kind of more framed around photographers offering this as a service rather than photographers getting them this done themselves. But let's say what would be a good branding? A photo for a photographer like us

Melissa Dusette: 26:56 For a photographer. Yeah. Yeah. There are lots of different things you could think about. Let's say just for our example, you're a photographer who's looking for personal brand clients, right? So let's say that's our goal and that's what we want to attract. Let's say we want to attract small businesses or individuals wanting personal brand photography, right? So a picture of us in our head just holding our camera, it's going to communicate that we're photographers, but it's not going to communicate a lot more about us. And what we'd really like to communicate is what makes us different. Yeah. So what keeps, what sets us apart in our industry and what sets us apart as a person. So for me, I think of myself as kind of a quirky quirky and fun kind of informal photographer. And so maybe I would photograph some kind of unconventional person and have someone take a picture of me photographing them.

Melissa Dusette: 28:13 So you see kind of see it in action or in this, in, in whatever kind of of environment. You could also take a picture in someone's favorite place in their city. So let's say, let's say, you know, you could catch, catch me at the field museum with my camera. You could take a picture of me taking pictures of something in, in the collections area, you know, and, and something like that. Obviously it's still taken a picture of me taking a picture, but it's communicating more about who I am, what's it's most important to me. Also, you know, let's say you as a photographer, you do donations or you serve serve on the committee of some community service organization. You know, you could go there and take pictures, have pictures taken of yourself, kind of serving those people in those purposes.

Melissa Dusette: 29:17 You don't even need to have your camera in the image to communicate that you're a brand photographer, you know, just kind of giving people a sense of who you are and what you stand for because people don't look you up. They don't hire photographers after they read who you are at text. They like to hire real people. And that's key is, is you want to communicate that you're a real person. You're not just a person with a camera. You are your own person with your own interests, your own strengths, your own passions, your own understanding of the world and your own, your own take on personal brand photography and what makes you different with personal brand photography.

Raymond: 30:06 Yeah. Interesting. I'm thinking about my website right now and it's a pretty text heavy and I'm thinking that I could probably have some more photos rather than, you know what it is that that makes me who I am and my brain is really going right now.

Melissa Dusette: 30:19 Well, it's good to kind of give people a sense of who you are. I mean, that's kind of what, that's kind of how Instagram has, has become so popular with photographers. Not only can you give, show people that images that you're taking, but you can show people who you are and what makes you different. And that's, that's kind of what we see too when you look up Instagram influencers and it obviously doesn't have to be all done on social media. You know, you can use these kinds of images to communicate who you are and what you stand for. You know, on your websites, you can use them in print materials videos for all your kinds of marketing deliverables. These kinds of images will show up and speak to your customers over and over and over again. And they're not just going to glaze over and say, okay, this is a personal brand photographer, but I'm not sure why I need to hire them over someone else. You know? So you use the image and you use your text to compliment that. But over and over again, it's, it's always shown that people will pay more attention to faces than they will to just text. And you want to show them who you are and what you stand for.

Raymond: 31:40 I like that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. I got to take a more pictures of meat and tacos, I suppose. Put those on my way.

Melissa Dusette: 31:48 Yeah, that'd be great. And then we know who more about who you are, you know. Okay.

Raymond: 31:51 As long as there's no cilantro, I am all about tacos. That

Melissa Dusette: 31:54 And your rep in your Dodger shirt, you know, now we know that you have some kind of connection with LA that's important to you. It's part of who you are.

Raymond: 32:03 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Melissa Dusette: 32:04 What makes you different and unique?

Raymond: 32:07 Previously that was just texts on our website, so I'm definitely going to have to update that and [inaudible] I like this. This is fun. Yeah, that's fine. So when you so when you're going to a personal branding photo shoot, when you go into that session, what is it that you're, what is it that you're trying to get? What are you looking for at that shoot to know that you nailed it?

Melissa Dusette: 32:28 So my work with personal brand, personal brand photography it doesn't start at the shoot. I always always have a consultation first and I always ride in my contracts. You have to show up and participate in the consultation. Otherwise the quality will decline and I'll end up taking a picture of you in a coffee shop because I won't have an opportunity to know anything about you. Right. so in my consultations with my clients, I take them out to coffee, always buy your clients their coffee ask them in their email what kind of coffee do you like and then have it waiting for them at the table when they show up. Because these are small business owners or they're solo entrepreneurs, they're nervous. They may not even know the answers to any of your questions. They don't know what questions are going to ask them.

Melissa Dusette: 33:28 They're nervous because they may only have $500 in their business account and they may be giving you most of it for these pictures. They may not even know exactly how to use yet. And a big part of this is making them feel at ease by showing them that you're confident and that you want to get the best pictures that you can from them. And part of the consultation that I do is talking to my client about their business, getting them to talk and kind of in a backwards way answering all these questions for me. Who are you? What are you passionate about? Who are your ideal customers? If you could speak to one ideal customer, you know, what's their age, what's their demographic, what do they do for a living? What's like one TV show or store or movie that they love, you know, kind of fill out what I call an audience persona for them and kind of keep that in the back of my mind.

Melissa Dusette: 34:33 I'm also in my consultation, I kind of make sure I align all of this with them, make sure I'm getting it all right, this total understanding of who they are. And a lot of times my clients will be like, Oh, that was amazing. I didn't even know any of the answers to those things until you made me kind of talk about it with you. Because they're just going the daily grind doing what they're best at. They're not thinking about these kinds of things, although they know the answers, you just have to pull it out of them. Yeah,

Raymond: 35:07 I like that. I like that. That definitely makes the the session a lot more interesting, a lot more fun while you're there and you know, gets him to loosen up for sure.

Melissa Dusette: 35:16 It's really a win win for all parties because on their end you're making them feel like they're not wasting their time, they're feeling confident in your abilities and they're feeling confident in the shoot that's going to be coming up for them. But it's also going to benefit you as a photographer. You're going to be able to take higher quality photos, which is going to get you repeat customers when they see the photos and they want to sign again. But it's also going to be beneficial to you because you can use these higher quality photos in your own website and your own portfolio to attract even more new customers. And so it's really the biggest, biggest thing I could say is don't ever, ever skip a consultation with your clients. Even if it has to be just over the phone. Please make sure you get a sense of who they are and what they want, and also get a sense of, of how they want to use these. Are they totally afraid of social media? Are they looking to do this whole social media campaign around it? Are they just needing shots for their website? You know, get a sense of their overall goal for how they want to be using these pictures. Because that's also going to help you kind of plan out the right photos for this.

Raymond: 36:36 Yeah. Yeah. So I'm in, right? I'm thinking to myself like, all right, this sounds great. I would love to network with more small businesses here locally in Indianapolis. I would like to form more of those relationships and I'd like to help them out so that they're not just getting cell phone photos. What's that first step? What was the first step for you? Can you tell me about your first paid personal branding client? You know, how did, how did they find you nervous? How did it turn out?

Mid Roll: 37:03 You are listening to the free version of the beginner photography podcast where each week you learn how world-class photographers see and capture the world around them. If you want to hear the extended interview with their best business tips to learn how to make money with your camera and then become a premium member today by heading over to beginner photography, podcast.com and click the premium membership button to join now.

Raymond: 37:28 So, Oh my gosh there's so much there to unpack, but as somebody who's who's had to work with social media before, obviously for, for my photography business as well as the podcast, I'm telling you, like my brain is just going in a million different directions right now with, with somehow like with a lot of clarity. Like, why did I never think of this? This is so easy. This is so fantastic. And again, I'm seeing as as you're having clients, right? How valuable that would be because I'm thinking of myself, if somebody did that for me, I cannot tell you how valuable that would be and how much it would help. Any business owner. So that is great too. You know, you sharing that gets me excited to be able to implement something and then give it to somebody else, another small business owner. So

Melissa Dusette: 38:19 I mean, you think about your, you think about your, your Instagram account and the photos that you've gotten the most engagement and likes and comments on, I can almost guarantee they're going to be the ones that have tugged on someone heartstrings where you told a story that was emotional,

Raymond: 38:35 Not even about the photo, not even about the photo.

Melissa Dusette: 38:37 It doesn't even have to be about the photo. It can correspond with the photo. But when, when you communicate something emotionally to your ideal customers, you're going to get by far the most engagement and attention.

Raymond: 38:49 Oh. And you broke it down. So, so clearly. I'm so excited to, I hate to say this, I'm so excited to hang up with you so that I can get to cause that is great. So again, Melissa, thank you for sharing that.

Melissa Dusette: 39:00 Marketing marketing can seem kind of scary. I mean we're all artists and as, as photographers and marketing is obviously not an art. It's something that people go to business school for. But in the end it's very human because it is just kind of a study of the human subconscious and how we respond to things in our environment. And when you think about it, the good thing is that when you think about it and you learn these kinds of fundamentals, it always makes sense and you think, Oh yes, you know, that does make sense. And you always have yourself to use as an example.

Raymond: 39:35 And that's exactly where I'm at right now. That's exactly where I'm at right now. Yeah. So again, again, thank you for that. That was so good. Yeah. Thinking back to maybe some of the other photographers listening the theme of the podcast for this year is make, do, make more, do more and make, do just with what you got because it's probably better than what you would imagine. Can you maybe in your, in your trainings or working with with other photographers, share where photographers miss this idea? Does that make sense as a question?

Melissa Dusette: 40:13 You mean like mistakes that they make or

Raymond: 40:17 I guess, let me rephrase. Can you think of a time where you've simply just had to make, do with, with what you had?

Melissa Dusette: 40:25 Yeah, yeah. I have had to make, do I have been put on the spot many times

Raymond: 40:35 Including right now. I apologize for this.

Melissa Dusette: 40:37 Okay. I know as a photographer I had been put on the spot a lot of times and really bad lighting and environments and just expected to create these amazing photos. Of course. Yeah, of course. I probably, it's probably the story of everyone's life, right?

Raymond: 40:55 How many people are still struggling with it? So I'm excited to hear.

Melissa Dusette: 40:59 And it is a struggle. It's, it's very, very difficult and and so I think you just have to keep going. You can't stop, but you can also communicate with your clients. Communication can be really amazing. Nobody expects you to be perfect if you don't have the right resources and tools because you are a technical artist. If you get put on the spot about lighting as I have

Melissa Dusette: 41:28 Anyways, this is how I handled it. I went up to my client and I, I just want you to notice that this lighting stinks in a nicer diplomatic way. I want you to notice that you see spots all over my face from the leaves and I want you to know that I'm going to continue it to shoot you. Just like we agreed, just like I promised. I'm going to do my best to work around the shadows and the lights, but I also want you to know if these come back and you don't like them, we're going to plan for another time. And that's just something that I do. If it's not right, I'm just going to do it again. It's going to take another half an hour of my time, an hour of my time. That's fine. Because most important is that the customer is happy and they get something that they love.

Melissa Dusette: 42:20 Looking at, whether it is portrait photography, whether it is personal brand photography, you know, you don't always have control of your environment and your conditions. You can't always bring your lighting with you. You know, and sometimes you have to work on the spot. It's kinda like being on stage and like your pants start to fall down. You have to keep going. You just have to keep going and you have to keep going because sometimes you'll go home and look at your camera and you will have gotten this amazing shot that you would have never have gotten if you didn't just keep going.

Raymond: 42:55 Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. I'm thinking of a time where, where that exact same thing happened to me. Now that you said something or I get home and I'm thinking the whole drive home, Oh, that didn't work out like they're going to, they're going to figure it out. I'm a fraud. Like, this is not, I get home and I think to myself, wow, these these turn out better than I expected and a Tibet. Great. And yet you're right. You know, if you just push through it, you don't let that that moment in that moment you don't just give up going to exception, you're going to grow,

Melissa Dusette: 43:25 You got to push through it and you got to communicate with your client. I know it's different with wedding photography because you don't get a redo in the same way that you could get a redo with a family portraits. So there's a lot more pressure there. But I think just communicating that and thinking outside the box, you know, well, this lady in sex, okay, well what's a different, what's a different kind of picture? I can't take that. We'll work with this lighting. Yeah. Maybe I can zoom in on something. Maybe I can crop something out. Maybe I can jump on top of the counter and take a picture from a different perspective. You know, just thinking outside the box with the challenges that you have, but always keep going.

Raymond: 44:08 I love it. I love it. So when it comes to I'm thinking back to portraits here, cause this is really the, the, the, the closest thing that I can relate the two. But when it comes to portraits, there's, you know, there's environmental portraits, natural light portraits, there's posed, there's candid portraits. Are there different types of personal branding photography as well? Or does it all fall under one umbrella?

Melissa Dusette: 44:32 It generally falls under one umbrella. And that's another thing that you'll probably want to distill down with your client if they have a preference, you know? And it also depends on what stories they're gonna they're going to share it with everybody. You know, obviously you can't take a lot of posed photos if you guys are all going to the animal shelter and feeding dogs for the day, you know, or whatever it is that you're going to do. But I find that most in general, I can try to promise a mix of both. And P 90% of the time, people always love the candid shots more.

Raymond: 45:10 Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Especially for something like Instagram where it already feels personal, it's hard to to force that that posed perspective on it.

Melissa Dusette: 45:20 And when you're trying to communicate and connect emotionally with a customer to achieve a goal, you want to make sure you stay genuine and you look genuine. And when you're posed, it's really hard to look genuine or a lot more difficult that still look like you're a genuine real person, you know? Then when you just catch someone, just catch them being in their element, being who they are. You know, there's nothing more genuine than that. And that's what people love and connect with and makes them pick up the phone or email you or book you however else they want to book you because they like you. You know?

Raymond: 46:00 So this, this will be my last question cause I know that we've we've gone over time and I want to be you know, mindful of your time, but how w w what's action step number one, where should the listeners, how should they get started?

Melissa Dusette: 46:16 How should you get started? I would start coming up with a list of, like I said, all those people that you make appointments with. Start thinking about people you can talk to about the possibility of personal brand photos. You know, and this is always the best way to kind of come up with your portfolio but also get some good practice in and also get some good practice. And talking about brands because talking about brands isn't a skill that photographers naturally have, right? But like I said, it's of extreme importance and personal brand photography for, for the obvious reasons. So start with that list and think it through and then also try to brush up on the, the, the elements of content marketing. You know, there's all kinds of resources all over the web for content marketing, but if you can get a grasp on some of the basics, it's really going to help you out. And I know that it's not our job to be marketers, it's not our job to do marketing for our clients. But like I said, it's a win win for everyone when you can use the foundation of marketing to plan your photos and get those photos back to you in a higher quality. So more people see that you have a better portfolio than your competition down the street who takes coffee shop photos.

Raymond: 47:45 Yeah,

Melissa Dusette: 47:46 Right. It can only benefit you. So that's, that's what I would say. That's where those two things I would start with.

Raymond: 47:54 Well, I don't normally ask this, but I still feel like I'm not a hundred percent versed in this topic. So is there anything that I didn't ask you today that you want to make sure that the listener knows about branding, photography?

Melissa Dusette: 48:08 Mmm. One thing that I need to make sure everybody understands about brand new photography is that you have to give all of the rights to your clients. And it, it's kinda hard for photographers sometimes because you always have control over their images. You have copyright control over all your images when you're a portrait or wedding photographer, any other kind of photographer, we have to learn to let go of that because you're creating you're creating marketing collateral for someone else and it belongs to them. They can do whatever they want with it, and they may not listen to you and do something you told them not to do. They may make disastrous written text on Instagram and put your photo up there or put a bad filter on it. You have to let it go because none of it belongs to you. And you have to make sure you write that in your contracts too. There's no attribution required for personal brand photography because you're creating something for another business. Right. And you don't own any of that. And that's, that's a big difference. And that can be a hard pill to swallow for some photographers. So it's also something to kind of wrap your head around and that's a big difference. Yeah,

Raymond: 49:34 Yeah. Or, yeah, I can imagine as a wedding photographer, I'm trying to think of how that would yeah, just guys, my, a, it's peaked my interest. But I mean I think you laid it out pretty well that, that does make sense. It's not, the intent isn't the same with a wedding photo is it is for a, for a personal brand photo what Melissa, I have to say thank you so much for chatting with me today. Everything that you did. I'm excited to look into this more and you know, possibly even implement this into what it is that I'm doing and I'm sure that some of the listeners are thinking the exact same thing. So if they want to learn more about personal branding photography, can you please share with us where we can find you and more about you online?

Melissa Dusette: 50:18 Yeah, sure. I am on social media mostly on Facebook. At golden will photo. I'm also on Instagram and Pinterest and YouTube. My website is golden Wolf, photography.com. And from there I have a free definitive guide to personal branding that you can download and that's got a really good primer for what personal branding is in general. So I, I recommend you check it out. I also have a personal branding consultation key for photographers that kind of lays out all of the elements I kind of touched on for the consultation and its importance. And all of the marketing that goes into that with marketing strategy. I have that for sale as well. That's a go dot golden Wolf, photography.com/consultation. So

Raymond: 51:17 Perfect. I will of course add links to everywhere in the show notes for this episode. But again, thank you so much for sharing everything that you did. It's been a real pleasure.

Melissa Dusette: 51:27 Yeah, me too. Thank you so much. And if anyone has any questions, you know, you can always reach me by email, golden Wolf photo at Gmail and I'm happy to continue this conversation further.

Raymond: 51:39 What an interview with Melissa. Oh, Melissa, if you're listening right now, thank you so much for sharing everything that you did and being an open book. This was, this was something that you know, it's a world that I am not familiar with and you really broke it down into some great, easy to follow steps. My biggest takeaway was it was, it was that it was that no matter where it is that you start what you went to school for, what you study and work towards where you're at. You can always start over and try something new like photography. I mean, Melissa went to school for something like, you know, like a real education. We're not talking like an arts degree here. We're talking a real education and she had found that, you know what, photography is something that I'm passionate about and I'm going to pursue that.

Raymond: 52:34 So once again, no matter what it is that you went to school for, where you're at right now, you can always try something different and start over really powerful stuff that I know a lot of people need to hear. So that's it for this week. That's all that I got. Right now I'm in San Antonio. If you're listening to this, I'm in San Antonio working on phase two of a feature that I am shooting that if you've been listening for awhile, you've been keeping up with and well technically I'm not right now because I'm recording this back home in Indianapolis, but by the time this goes out, I will be in San Antonio. So be sure to follow along on Facebook. I'm sure that I'll be posting updates in the Facebook group about what's going on down there if you want to check it out. So you can find that by heading over to Facebook and just searching for beginner photography podcast. You'll find the group right there, Khan in, join the conversation. So that's it for this week. Until next week, I want you to make, do I want you to make more, I want you to do more and I want you to make, do with the gear that you got because I promise you it's better than you think. All right, that's it. Talk to you soon.

Outtro: 53:40 Thank you for listening to the beginner photography podcast. If you enjoy the show, consider leaving a review in iTunes, keep shooting, and we'll see you next week.