Photography Tips · Brussels

How Does a Personal Branding Photography Session Work for Consultants?

By Dmytro Derkach · Brussels-based commercial photographer

One sitting, planned backwards from every place your face has to appear — profile, website, proposal, conference slide — and invoiced to you or your own company. Here is what actually happens, in order, before you book.

Why one session instead of four separate ones

When you are the business, your face is the product page. A consultant, coach or independent lawyer is chosen from a screen long before the first call, and the photograph does the arguing while you are not in the room. Most independents need the same face in four or five shapes: a tight crop for a profile, a horizontal frame for a website header, a wider one an organiser can cut into, a version that holds up on a book cover. Booked separately, that is four sessions and four invoices. Planned into one sitting through a Portraits session, it is one appointment, and every image is unmistakably the same person on the same day.

What happens before the date

The session is built from a list, not a mood. Before you show up, you name two or three places the images actually need to work. That list decides the framing, the wardrobe note and the delivery formats — it is planned backwards from where the photographs will live, not forwards from a nice idea.

During the session: the part people worry about

Almost everyone booking this says the same thing: they photograph badly and never know what to do with their hands. That is a posing problem, not a face problem, and it is the job you are paying someone else to solve. The session is directed step by step, you see frames on screen as you go, and nothing is finalised that you have not looked at yourself.

Invoicing yourself or your own company

The invoice goes to you personally or to your own company, whichever you prefer — say which at booking. Whether it is deductible depends on your status and your accountant, not on the photographer, but the invoice is issued in a form that lets you ask that question properly.

What you actually receive

Square, vertical and horizontal files from the same sitting, so there is no resizing on your side afterwards. Retouching stays natural — you, on a good day, not someone else — and usage rights come without a time limit, which matters more for an independent than for a company: nobody should have to check a licence before putting their own face on their own website.

A realistic market rate for a full personal branding session, covering the formats above and delivered with unlimited usage rights, typically falls between 350€ and 600€, depending on the number of final files and locations involved.