I photograph a lot of personal branding sessions in a typical month, which puts me in a good position to notice when something shifts. A few things have changed in the last few months, both in what clients are asking for and in how they use the photos once they have them. Here's what I'm seeing in the studio.
Colour is creeping back in
For years, the safe default was a white or grey backdrop — clean, business-like, trustworthy. I still think that look works, and it's not going anywhere. But I'm seeing more clients, especially in creative, software and design businesses, ask for something with more personality and more colour.
Some of that is timing. New Zealand's economy has had a rough run, and it's starting to turn a corner. Business owners are feeling more positive, more bookings are coming in, and people are more willing to stand out rather than blend in. When budgets are tight, everyone plays it safe. When confidence comes back, people start asking to look like themselves again.
Clients are trying things they didn't think they'd like
My job is to make people comfortable enough in front of the camera that something real comes through — an expression, a bit of body language, a way of talking with their hands — that they don't realise is worth photographing. I'll often say something like "that's a look you do a lot, I want that in your shot," and it's usually the frame they end up loving most.
Lately I've been testing different lighting setups with clients too — some a bit bolder than the standard personal branding look, built to stop the scroll rather than blend into a feed. Almost every time, it's a look the client wouldn't have picked for themselves beforehand, and ends up being their favourite.
Your photos are the backbone of your content — use them that way
One thing I hear from other photographers is that they're precious about how clients use their own photos afterwards — restricting edits, discouraging clients from repurposing them. I think that's backwards. Once you've paid for a session, the photos are yours to use however helps your business.
I'm seeing clients get genuinely creative with this: pulling a background out of a shot, dropping a photo into an AI tool like Claude and asking it to help draft a post around it, building out a whole content library from one session instead of a single LinkedIn photo. That's a real shift from "I need a headshot" to "I need a backbone for my content."
I've done a version of this myself. I cloned my own voice, wrote a script in my own words, and laid it over my own personal branding photos to promote my photography business — no camera, no filming day, still entirely me. It's a good example of a real photo plus an AI tool doing something a straight photo can't do on its own.
My own voice, cloned, narrating over my own personal branding photos — no camera, no filming day. Built with a voice twin from Digital Twin Imaging, my other business.
The AI headshot question, answered plainly
People ask me this a lot, so here's my real answer rather than the polite one. If you're a large team spread across offices, or you've got someone based overseas who can't get in front of a camera, a well-made AI headshot can genuinely solve a real logistics problem — provided someone on your team has put the time in to do it well. Badly done, it reflects on the whole business. Well done, by someone who knows what they're doing, it's a legitimate answer.
If you don't have a big marketing budget, though, real and current photos are one of the few ways you can compete against a business with a much bigger one. That's not a knock on AI — it's just that authenticity is the lever available to you when a bigger production budget isn't. Most people can still tell the difference between a real photo and an AI one, though that gap is closing and won't always be so obvious.
I'm not precious about which tool gets you there. Traditional photography, video, AI photography — whatever fits your budget and gets you in front of the people you're trying to reach is the right choice for your business.
If any of this sounds like where your business is right now — wanting photos that look like you, and that you can build a whole content library from — book a personal branding session with me in Auckland.