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Personal Branding Experience with Dawn Todd

April 19, 2016 by Christina Leave a Comment

Confession: Photographing Dawn always makes me nervous. And it’s because she was one of my first clients, my first cheerleader, supporter… I’ve been photographing her for the last 8 years, and in the back of my mind, I think “what if she doesn’t like her photos this time?” And that even happened once. And the sky didn’t fall. She didn’t hate me after that. Life (and business) went on. And she even came back to try it again.

Great relationships are like that. Great business people are like that. Honest, straight-forward and persistent.

And I am so grateful for Dawn. Her encouragement. Her energy. Dawn has an amazing courage – to try things in her business, and to get up and try something new if it doesn’t work. Not to mention that she’s smart enough to keep doing the things that do work! Nothing gets in the way of this woman’s success. She is a raving beauty inside and out. Wouldn’t you agree?

How Personal Branding Boosts Your Business

March 23, 2016 by Alyssa Jenkins Leave a Comment

Whether you are starting your own business, looking to grow and maintain your own business, be a part of a business, or wanting to stand out in the business you’re currently in, personal branding in a positive and encouraging manner is always important. Successful personal branding ties your business together, so people can see how respectable you are. It helps people believe in you and what you do, so they feel good about handing you their credit cards.

What’s one of the first steps in promoting yourself in the best light possible? Photography of you—beautifully and professionally done photography that communicates what you want the world to know about you and your business.

One entrepreneur who brought on the Christina Gressianu Photographer team be a part of her successful business adventure is a lovely woman named Crystal.

Crystal lives in Southern California with her dog Bruiser and boyfriend Dustin. Her hobbies include wine tasting (yum), and get this, her job! Crystal owns a social media education company where she and her team train independent retailers how to market online. Her business and her customers mean so much to her, and she wanted her potential customers to trust her from the very first glance at her website.

Many of Crystal’s clients get to know her and her business through online platforms. She knew having professional branding photos done would increase her personal connection with her clientele. Crystal uses the professional pictures on her websites, social media sites, speaker posters, speaker programs, banners for conferences, and printed flyers. When her visitors and followers noticed the new and improved photos, Crystal said she was, and still is, constantly getting compliments on her pictures. She believes people love her photos because she felt like herself during her portrait session with Christina Gressianu, and that authenticity shows through the photos. This gives me so much joy because that means people are seeing Crystal for the beautiful, successful, hard-working woman that she is.

Crystal believes her professional photographs were key to the success of branding herself within her business. I am SO glad I was able to be a part of her journey and I can’t wait to see how she grows in herself and in her business. Check Crystal out at www.SocialEdge.co

Want your own Personal Branding Session?? Click here: Personal Branding Session Info

View more photos from Crystal’s shoot below!

Hands in Headshots… Do they belong or not?

March 30, 2015 by Christina 2 Comments

Recently, a client of mine posted on Facebook a question about why she’s seeing so many head shots with hands in them. Chins resting on a hand, on hands on a face, etc. She didn’t like them and wanted to see head shots without the hands… and hopes it’s not widespread trend. To which the comments were fairly passionate about how awful posed portraits are especially when a hand is in there to hide a double chin or something. How it’s cliche, how it makes an otherwise confident-looking woman look coy, etc.

Well, I chimed in a bit… because I love using hands in portraits… but I also chose to stay out of the fray. To me, to say “I hate portraits with hands in them” is like saying “I hate chocolate with nuts in it.” And I know this because I used to say that… the chocolate one. But I’ve since learned that it is just too broad a mindset. Is it dark chocolate or milk? What kind of nuts are in there? What else is in there? What is the chocolate-to-nut ratio? Because the Chocolove Sea Salt and Almond bar is to die for. While the Hershey’s with Almond bar is easily passable.

And so, with hands, the question is what is the headshot or portrait supposed to communicate? What other body language is going on? Is the hand posed correctly? Is it showing tension? I think you can have a hand in there and show confidence. I think you can have in there and show anything, just like you can show anything without a hand. It’s not the hand to blame. Hands are so beautiful. Much like faces, they express so much. Tension you might be able to keep out of your face shows up in your hands.You have to have some guts to show your hands near face. Hands are what do the things you’re doing. They make manifest your ideas and feelings. Dream up a garden and try making it real without your hands. Hands draw attention too. Your eye naturally follows a pointing finger. So you see, I love hands.

And I use hands in my portraits often. And maybe it’s not quite accurate to call them head shots, because they show a bit more body language than just a head shot should. But I’d love to hear your thoughts on these photos… head shots… using hands. (And while I’m open to criticism of my work, please remember that these lovely people are actually my clients. Let’s keep it kind, ok?)

On Caring and Commitment

February 20, 2015 by Christina Leave a Comment

In just the last week or so I have experienced a handful of things have me thinking about caring and commitment. What does it take for you to care about something? And why is commitment so unattractive to so many of us?

The latest event I experienced was learning of someone’s incredible hardship. Matt and Katie are an adorable couple, husband and wife photographers and people seriously committed to a cause. I met them once, two years ago, at a photographers’ conference and what I remember about them is how truly committed they were. And since then their lives have been turned upside down… well, that’s understatement. When I read about what they’re going through, my heart went out to them… all the way around to Australia. I cared, and not only with my heart, but with my wallet too. And watching the dollar figure go up, I’m grateful that so many other people care too.

Another thing that happened this week was a monumental argument in our house about plastic straws. Not a typo… plastic straws. Because it seems a little bit insane to drill oil out of the ground, ship it to China, make plastic straws, and ship them to the US so that I can use it for seven minutes and throw it away. Insane… and pretty disgusting. For the most part, I don’t use straws. But my stepdaughter puts a straw in her glass every time she makes a smoothie. So I bought these nifty 2-part, dish-washable silicon straws. And the argument presented to me was “what’s the big deal?” I didn’t know exactly, other than over-archingly plastic is a gigantic pollution problem. So I Googled, and discovered that in the US, we use and throw away 500 million plastic straws Every Single Day. That’s half a billion… every. Day. So if there’s a giant problem, but you don’t experience it in your daily life, what does it take for you to care about it? If we throw away 500 million plastic straws, but you only see the 1 or 2 you throw away, what does it take for you to give those 2 straws up?

I also had the privilege of creating staff head shots of the incredible team at Realities for Children. My favorite thing about RFC is that they are helping, saving, serving children right here in my town / county / state. Look around Fort Collins, and you think things are pretty honky dory. But in 2012, there were nearly 5,700 reports of child abuse or neglect in Larimer County. Not so honky dory after all. What makes you care about the abuse you don’t see? About children you don’t even know exist?

And that brings me around to commitment. Because Craig and Molly, who started Realities for Children 25 years ago are the living portraits of commitment. And I go back to the problem of two straws, and I think about getting married in a few weeks… so I’m thinking about why commitment is so unpopular. See the problem, I think, is that so many of us think of commitment as a binary, as black or white. Either I’m on a diet, or I’m not. Either I’m being eco-friendly, or I’m not. I’m either vegan, or I’m not. Every one knows some one who was vegan or vegetarian, and then “had to have a hamburger” and then was no longer vegan or vegetarian. And I ask why? Having been all these things and none of them, I see commitment as a “practice.” I mostly eat foods that are grown in the dirt, and then when I just have to have cheesecake, I have cheesecake. And then I re-commit to my health, and all those sweet cows I’ll never meet, and my waistline. And that’s that. I got water at a restaurant a couple days ago and the waiter brought it with a straw it in. What the heck did he do that for? I didn’t ask for a straw…

And when I think about the people at RFC, I get that commitment gets heavy. They can’t save every child who needs saving. That’s depressing. Disheartening. So when my commitments to saving animals and helping kids and cutting down on plastic and fitting into my jeans and leaving the world in a better place than I found it… when those get heavy I put them down. I have ice cream or suck on a green Starbucks straw or buy that dopey fun thing at Target. But the next day I pick those commitments back up and re-commit. I get better at doing good. What can you find to care about? And can you care enough about the problems you can’t see to commit to making a difference?

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3 Easy Tips on What to Wear for your Headshots and Promotional Portraits

November 1, 2012 by Christina 1 Comment

We get dressed every day, and get one of the most common questions I get from portrait clients is “what should I wear?” Male or female, age-independent. I get it, the mere thought of being photographed makes us as nervous as going in for a root canal. Since my focus is on making people comfortable and happy in front of my camera, I’ve broken the clothing question into 3 easy tips.

1 – Solid color clothing — no polka dots, no wild prints, and no distracting stripes. Clothing of this type can have a tendency to distract the viewer from the most important subject in your photos, you. And, it often makes you look wider in photos, because all the slimming subtleties of light are lost in the pattern. Pin-stripes are ok. Anything crazier than pin-stripes is a no no.

2 – Pastel colors are typically not flattering in a professional headshot. Neither is white or black, (you’ll end up being a floating head as the photo gets small, like say in your Facebook profile) but more importantly, you should avoid anything that clashes with your skin tone. I like well-saturated colors that compliment your eyes and skin tone. Think royal blue, forest green, magenta.

3 – Bling! Adding some sparkle with jewelry is great as long as it compliments you rather than distracting. Dangly earrings and simple necklace are great.

Lastly, you don’t have to listen to me. If you feel you look really good in something, even if it doesn’t abide by these “rules”, bring it to your session anyway. Worst case is we shoot a couple of photos you don’t love amongst all the ones youdo.

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