Prep checklist for a brand shoot.

Start with the channels list.

Before you think about a single outfit, write down every place your photos actually need to live: your website, your profiles, your posts, a pitch deck, a press page, a newsletter. This list decides almost everything that follows, because a wide banner image and a square profile photo are different pictures, not the same picture cropped two ways.

This is the whole idea behind personal brand photography, covered in full in the personal brand photography guide: plan the destinations first, then build a sitting that fills them, rather than shooting first and hoping something usable comes out of it.

An honest list is usually shorter than the worry that comes before it. A homepage, three or four profiles, a folder of posts and maybe a deck covers most real needs, and knowing that before you start keeps the rest of this checklist from feeling like more work than it is.

The palette, not just the outfits.

Look at your own website or your best social posts and pull out the two or three colors that already show up there. That is your palette for the day, and it makes choosing wardrobe far easier than starting from a closet with no direction.

• The color your logo or your site leans on most.
• One neutral you already wear often.
• One accent you feel confident in, used sparingly.

Keep the palette loose rather than exact. A close match photographs better than a perfect one forced into a shade that does not actually suit you.

The looks to bring.

Two or three planned looks cover most channel lists comfortably, and which two or three is a wardrobe question with a guide of its own rather than something to solve inside a checklist. What belongs here is the packing rule: bring options instead of one outfit you are certain about, and include the piece you are unsure of. We plan your looks together before the shoot, and an unsure piece is exactly the kind of thing that gets settled quickly once it is in the room.

Solid colors hold up better than busy patterns across the small crops a website or a profile actually uses, and that is as far as this page goes on the subject. Fit, color, pattern and how to keep several looks reading as one set are worked through in what to wear for a personal brand shoot, which is worth reading before you pack rather than after.

Real objects, from your actual work.

If your work involves tools, materials or anything you physically hold, bring it. A laptop, a notebook, samples of what you make or sell, whatever you would actually be doing if a camera were not in the room. These are the images that make a shot list feel specific instead of generic.

• The tool or material you use most in an ordinary week.
• Something with your own branding on it, if that is honest to how you work.
• A notebook or a device, if a seated, working frame is on your list.

A studio session cannot recreate your actual workspace, and it should not try. What it does well is isolate you and your objects against a clean background, which covers most of what a page or a profile actually needs.

The shot-list conversation.

Come with a rough shot list even if it is only a few scribbled rows: where an image goes, roughly what shape it needs to be, and what you are doing in it. You do not need to solve this alone. We refine it together before the shoot, and having a starting point makes that conversation faster and more useful than starting from nothing.

This is the same planning a content day runs on, only smaller: the list first, then the order of the looks, so the decisions are already made by the time you are standing in front of a backdrop.

What to pack.

• The looks you are bringing, on hangers, plus any objects from your shot list.
• Touch-up makeup for the middle of the session.
• Your glasses, cleaned, if you wear them daily.
• A written or typed version of your channel list and shot list, even a messy one.

None of this needs to be polished. It only needs to exist before you walk through the door, so the day can start with a plan instead of a conversation about what one should be.

Pack the night before rather than the morning of, the same way you would for any session. A steamed shirt, a charged phone with your list saved on it, and a bag by the door leave the morning open for the things that actually matter, like eating a proper meal and leaving a little earlier than you think you need to.

The day itself, and two decisions to settle first.

You will be asked to shift register several times over one sitting, and that is far easier from a rested start than a rushed one. The general countdown that applies to every session, sleep, skincare, hands and hair, is covered fully in how to prepare for a photoshoot, and it applies here just as much as it does to a single headshot.

Two decisions are worth settling before you arrive rather than during. Whether you are doing your own hair and makeup or having it arranged is weighed properly in professional makeup versus doing it yourself, and if you have caught more sun than you meant to in the week beforehand, how to avoid sunburn before a session covers what to do about it. Once you are in front of the camera, the posing side of a multi-look sitting has its own guide in how to pose for personal brand photos, though you will not need to have read it to be directed well on the day.

None of this checklist is meant to feel like homework. Bring what you have, even an incomplete version of it, and treat the rest of the list as something we finish together rather than something you had to arrive having already solved.