Drowning in Pinterest boards, oh-so-many browser tabs, and a rapidly deteriorating sense of perspective, I had one very annoying question playing on repeat in my mind:

“Why the hell didn’t I get a photo of myself sitting in a chair at my last brand shoot?”

I was knee-deep in a much-needed website refresh, after I had convinced myself the entirety of the internet was laughing at the sheer 2012-ness of my About page. I hadn’t updated it in exactly 3.7 years and was currently agonizing over the hero image (that big, bold image at the top of your webpage that should instantly make your visitors feel seen, welcome …at home)

 

 

I had plenty of brand photos to choose from (hundreds, if I’m being honest). The problem was they were taken 2 years prior, when I wasn’t sure how to clearly articulate what I wanted (aka very much didn’t want to offend the photographer’s creative process) — also,  I had since lost 40 lbs.

Two very good reasons to get my now slightly smaller butt to a new brand shoot.

The problem? I had exactly 3 days scheduled to refresh this website, and neither the inclination nor the effortlessly chic Victoria-Beckham-approved wardrobe in place to feel confident enough to do so.

So pic after pic, I kept trying to make those old brand photos work because, well, I had paid for them. And there’s something uniquely irritating about having professional photos that are technically good but practically useless. It was like I bought a beautiful dress for a gala and the moment I stepped into the room I realized everyone else had understood the assignment VERY differently.

There was even a moment of sheer desperation where I tried to make a photo from my camera roll work. I had begged my partner to snap of me on a day where the sun was shining into my office just right and I was sporting uncharacteristically frizz-free hair. (Curly girls, IYKYK.)

(Ah, Frizz-free hair!)

I was just about to give up on the entire refresh, when a Pin on Pinterest caught my eye. It was a photo of an impossibly chic woman in a chair, looking pensively out a window with her computer on her lap. The setting was bare, the chair looked like it was snagged from a Restoration Hardware showroom, and the shadows hitting her face were just the right amount of moody.

I didn’t just want that photo. I wanted my entire website to feel like that photo. Like you were stepping into THAT world. I wanted cinematic. Intentional. Like every image was chosen on purpose for exactly this moment in this design.

My existing photos weren’t even close.

So my choices were to settle for a less than perfect home page, or book a brand shoot and spend the next two weeks drinking SlimFast and actually washing my face before bed.

Again, that pesky problem: I had ZERO time for a brand shoot. And to be honest, I wasn’t completely sure I wanted one. I was tired of spending thousands of dollars on pictures that had the same basic problem — the photos were good, but by the time it actually came to using them, I realized they were missing all the things I didn’t know I needed.

• I didn’t know I would need that one specific horizontal shot.
• I didn’t know I’d want something softer for the About page.
• I didn’t know I’d need a photo where I wasn’t smiling directly at the camera because the headline was already doing enough emotionally.
• I didn’t know I’d want something more cinematic, more dramatic, more aligned with the feeling of the site.

And I definitely did not know that a simple wooden chair would become of obsession-level importance to my damn hero image.

But that’s the thing about brand photos:

You often don’t know what you need until you’re inside the thing you’re building.

You can plan the shoot. You can make the shot list. You can save the inspiration. You can tell yourself you’re going to be very strategic and intentional and not just black out under pressure and say “Sure!” every time the photographer suggests something. (Hi, guilty.)

But sometimes the real clarity comes later. When you’re actually designing the website or writing the sales page or creating the launch graphics and suddenly realizing — oh, this would work so much better if I had a photo that felt like this.

And that’s when I had the thought, the one that started this whole thing.

Could I make them myself?

And then the scarier, more exciting thought: could I make them myself with AI?

I know. I know.

Depending on how you feel about AI, that sentence either sounds exciting, or like the beginning of a True Crime podcast where someone ends up with missing fingers and a jawline that belongs to a completely different bloodline.

Honestly, I was skeptical too. But I was also on a deadline, I didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars on another brand shoot when I still wasn’t sure exactly what I needed, and I really, really wanted to know if it was possible to create images that felt strategic and beautiful and on-brand without turning myself into a poreless android with Pantene hair and exactly 5.5 fingers.

So I started experimenting.

Some of the images were pretty in the way a hotel lobby is pretty — polished, expensive-ish, and completely devoid of personality, and some (okay, a lot) were bad. Like I was living my worst Kristen-DiMera-doppelganger nightmare IRL.

(PS if you get this reference please send me a DM so we can be bff’s) 

But after a lot of trial and error, I found a process that actually worked.

Good enough that I could create an image, put it into the website, and immediately see whether it worked. And if it didn’t, I could adjust. I could change the angle, the setting, the lighting, the composition, the expression. I could make it warmer, moodier, cleaner, more editorial, less stiff, more spacious.

I could create the photo I wished I had all along. And then I could create ten more.

It wasn’t just that I could generate a few decent images of myself. It was that I could build an entire visual library around my actual brand, in real time, in my freakin’ PJs with no makeup, and the beginnings of a pimple on my nose.

Now here is the cool part. This is my hero image NOW:

And this was the hero image I was going to settle for before my AI shoot:

I’ll let that land for a second.

And here is a handful of images from my first ever Ai Brand Shoot:

I’m not saying real-life brand shoots are obsolete.

I would 100% have gotten myself to a professional if I could accurately convey what I wanted my photos to look like, had found the right space to shoot in — modern, minimal, lots of white space and deep editorial shadows — and had the time to pull it all together.

A great in-person brand shoot is invaluable when you have the budget, the photographer, and a clear sense of what you need. I’m not here to pretend otherwise or act like photographers are suddenly irrelevant because an AI program made me look the perfect level of “quietly confident.”

But I do think AI brand shoots solve a different problem.

They give you options when you’re still figuring out what you need. They let you test a visual direction before investing in it. They help you build around the actual thing you’re creating instead of forcing the thing you’re creating to work around whatever photos you happen to have.

And for me, that was the difference.

So should you try your own AI brand shoot?

I’d say 100% give it a whirl if…

👉 You’re the business owner whose brand has evolved faster than her photo library.

👉 You’re building a website and realizing your current photos are technically nice but completely wrong for the thing you’re creating.

👉 You need options before you know exactly what you need.

👉 You want to test a visual direction before investing in a full shoot.

You don’t have three weeks to pull together outfits, locations, hair, makeup, props, shot lists, and the emotional stability required to be perceived in high definition while simultaneously pretending you’ve had a consistent skincare routine.

That person might need an AI brand shoot.

At the very least, you deserve the damn chair photo.