Today is all BLUE. A visual feast of BLUE to tickle your senses and delight your imagination. There are photos of dark blue, light blue, green blue, sky blue.
Enjoy
My First Website
This is so FUN! I just stumbled across a word doc with the visual branding essence’s that I wrote in 2009 to help me create my first website as well as the images that I used on it.
I wanted to share it with you - cause it just shows my evolution AND I hope it helps you start thinking about what story are your images telling.
Because every image you use in your marketing right tells a story about you.
AND IT'S really important to know just WHAT that story is!!!
That’s where I come in - before every branding shoot the client and I create what that visual story.
I started doing these Visual Branding sessions with clients when I started my working with entrepreneurs in 2008 (I left photojournalism in late 2007 - but took a year to find my voice and niche!)
So in 2009 I create a visual brand story for my self (the one bellow). I was finally standing out as Lindsay A. Miller, my company was called The Marketing Photographer. I was using event photography and branding images in new ways to market and really reach new and larger audiences for my client to really stand out and be seen.
Here it is what I crafted and created in 2009! I am posting the images and the website down bellow. How do you think I did?
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1). Cutting Edge: I use event photography to market my clients in new and exciting ways. I give my clients a reach and visibility that they didn’t have before. My clients are on the cutting edge of internet marketing, So “Cutting Edge” is how I want to be seen. I want this to show up in my visual story as very fashion forward, a sharp dresser, and website that is done with clean and straight lines. A cutting edge design to my website.
2. Authentic. My clients are very authentic… and so I am I. My photographs need to show my authenticy. Cause it’s who I am and it’s the first step for clients to feel comfortable with me. When a client works with me I must know my clients intimately. We must have a relationship. One where my clients can be comfortable telling me all about their mission, purpose, and struggle. ANd a relationship where they are comfortable being who they are in front of me and the camera. To be goofy, to make mistakes, and strength into being visible. I want to create a sense of intimacy in my visual marketing. So everything must be authentic, real, fun, trustworthy .
3. Expert/ Quality. I am the expert of everything visual - crafting stories, capturing images, using images in marketing. I want to be my client's visual editor. So everything must say trustworthy. I want this to show up in my visuals as one of Quality. Nothing, now I mean nothing, can show up in my marketing that is not one of Quality. The story I want to tell is - “ You can trust me to receive and experience and results that are one of quality. Quality from beginning to end. From the first photo one sees - to my site - to quality of images they get in the end."
A Visual Feast for your eyes: PINK
Have I ever told you how much I love PINK? I love pink shoes, shirts, bras, jackets, jewelry, pink back packs, hats, bikes, lipsticks, donuts, icing, blankets, suitcases.. and so much more. There are so many different shades and so much fun...
But this wasn't always so! Can you relate this story?
I used to hate PINK!
As a younger teenager hated everything I thought pink stood for.. cheerleaders, kids, woman who cared to much about make up, and things that one didn't take seriously.
If I look even farther back I can see I didn't relate to things the girls did. I was a tomboy.. climbing trees and liking reptiles. I hung out with the boys on the street not the girls who seemed to like dolls and playing house.
My mom was a feminist and wanted the world to take me seriously.. education and brains where what was important. Thus fueling my dislike of girly things of pink as I got older. (I am not putting this teaching down .. I am glad for it.. and it just puts things into context for me)
And then it changed.
I can remember the day.. like it was yesterday. I was 29 or 30... I had fished a photo shoot with a client who had been styled by the incredible color specialist Kailash Sozzani.
I was wearing a black top and white pants. After the shoot, I tentatively said to Kailash "Am I in my colors?? She was incredible kind. She just shook her head no, "you would look great in PINK!"
HA!!! The very color I hated. It was a good moment, I remember laughing out loud, cause it was comical, the one color I hated! In that moment was open to it and open to the change in perspective. In that moment of laughter a flood of resistance of what pink stood for fell away.
I went on to working directly with Kailash and then later with Nathalie Chapron and have had a love affair with pink. I look good in PINK! And now I can't get enough.
I can be smart, strong, and be taking seriously AND wear/love pink.
SO here today I am taking you through a pink exploration. A visual feast for your eyes, to tickle your senses and delight your imagination.
Enjoy
A Visual Feast for your eyes: Purple
Just cause.... I love purple.
A Visual Feast for the eyes: Black
It's late at night, I am in a dark room lite by candle light. It's delightfully warm and I feel unusually wide awake.
I don't normally post at night, but it felt like the perfect moment to post all about the color BLACK.mmmmmm. BLACK is sexy!! The color makes me think of my favorite sexy black dress that fits just right. Being under the pitch black of night sky looking at the stars. That first kiss at the end of date (it always late at night) when one's face is flush with joy.
So please enjoy on this moonless night as I take you through a journey of the color black. This is to delight your senses, tickle your imagination, and take you on trip some where far away. A feast for your eyes.
Enjoy.
Client Spotlight: Conner Saur
Client Spotlight: Cyndi Padilla
Client Spotlight: Mary Andrews
Client Spotlight: Jeanna Gabillini
I don't just take pictures
I feel so seen! After Julie Foucht and her woman's epic "Reclaiming the Feminie" photo-shoot, Ellen Ozzy Wrona sent me these photographs of our day. She was taking photos of me during our 6 hours photo-shoot along the our majestic sea side manor and along the shoreline of New England.
And I love them. (Than you Ellen!!)
I love that they show me in action and not just taking photos...
SEE< I don't just take pictures.
I coach, I teach, I model how to get into your body and let your true essence be seen while having the camera on you.
I hear this a lot before a photo shoot with me: "I do not take good photographs." And every time I hear it, I know that has it has been true, but it's not the TURTH.
It's only because no one has taught you how to take a good photograph! (and I know this personally because I used to say this too!)
Allowing for inmate, relaxed, joyous person you are to be witnessed in front of the camera takes practice. It takes effort, it takes intention, and it takes some one to teach you how.
It can be taught.
And everyone is different. And I love the moment it happens when you open and let me see the truth of you. For some it takes longer, and some it's shorter, for some there is tears, and for some there is anger in the way.
For me, I allowed the camera in for only a few minutes, then went back to being uncomfortable. It was a slow process over many shoots. And here I am, I can't wait to get in front of the camera.
And each woman did it.
Each woman stepped reclaimed a part of themselves by allowing it to be seen in the camera. There is always a moment, and it's seen not only by me and my camera, but by everyone who is watching. It's an collective ohhhhh that spreads.. now THAT what I want for your marketing!
VIDEO: It's starting... behind the senses of todays shoot
It's time to heal the hurt we woman have caused each other
Reclaiming the feminine = Reclaiming sisterhood
It's time. It's time to make this change.
It's time to healing the hurt we woman have done to each other.
I sit here, perched on a New England rock, surrounded by shoreline grasses, at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
I feel the power of the tide as it rushes closer and closer. I feel its magnitude. A power so much bigger than me.
As I watch the ripple affect of the tide rolling in on the shoreline and I think of my own power and the ripple affect my power has on the world around me.
And even though, I am a small part of this great world, my power affects others. Deeply.
And as I re-enter the world (from all my traveling and adventures) I am aware of all the major things happening in the news around the feminine. I am reading all the touching post of the abuse caused by men. Watching clips of the crazy trial. I have felt anger, sadness, and torn apart. It has also spurred me on to do my work, to stand tall for the feminine by helping women be more visible with their powerful gifts.
AND I sit here so sad, I sit here with a heavy heart.
As julie and in where up late last night talking, after an amazing epic day of sisterhood.
Julie turns to me and says "we are not just healing from the patriarchy we are healing the wounds caused by other women."
A full body chills ran access my skin. I felt the power of hers words so deeply.
The only way to make change is to heal sisterhood, to heal from our past and to stop hurting each other.
In that moment I felt all the harms done to me by other women.
Betrayal, judgment, and being outcast.
Then I almost started crying thinking about the harms I have done other woman. Like the my best friend in elementary school who I ostracized so I could be friends with popular girls.
So we have come all this way to a city that is known for its harm done to women, by the patriarchy during the Salem witch trials.... but to learned that women's betrayal of each other played a huge part in the persecution.
This has got to stop.
We need to heal. We need to stop judging, to putting each other down, stop not listening, punishing, behaving badly because we are jealous.
How so we do this? I don't know the full answer.
But I am committed to leaning into sisterhood to find out.
I am committed to uplift and to support the woman in my life. To stop judging, to stop talking behind another woman back. To be all inclusive.
What woman's life can you make better today? How can we heal?
Paris Musings
Let me set the scene, it was 4pm we are in Paris. We have just finished photographing at the Louvre, and we had one more stop at the Eiffel Tower to finish our all day photoshoot around this amazing city.
We where taking a break and sitting at a cafe. It was a dramatic place with dark velvet curtains, black table tops, and red velvet chairs. As we where sipping our cappuccinos, I start to notice around us all the young beautiful women sitting in the cafe with these older distinguished men. These women stood out, they where young, tall, really really thin and what I call fashion unusual - so fashion forward I can not tell what they are wearing.
There where several pairs like this all over the cafe, looking like they are in an interview, because they where all sitting across from one another. So of course I started watching one in particular. A young beautiful woman sat down and handed the older man an iPad which he started flipping though photos of her on. I could see some and they were professional modeling pictures of her.
It dawned on me it's fashion week here in Paris, and these were models showing their portfolios! I assume to get hired.
Then I looked back at our table, with our women of all shapes and sizes, ages and weights. And we had just created an amazing "portfolio" of photographs of them all over town.
Each woman at my table was so beautiful, so memorizing. I had just capture them, so I knew how amazing they could model. Wowing me on front of the camera. They where as beautiful as any professional models in the cafe.
Not only had they amazed me with their spirit and sexiness, they looked fucking hot! Every outfit had been hand picked and styled by Nathalie Chapron. And what she does is breathtaking to whiteness. I can't even describe it, but when you see a woman so in her essence and she feels good in what she is wearing... you can't take your eyes off her. That is what Nathalie does!
The images I had just taken could/should line the pages of the magazine!!!
I was so grateful to be at our table. With such beauty. Such femininity. Such fashion.
And then I had a moment of pause. I took a breath in as I thought about what was happening right in that moment.
I do like fashion, I actually like even fashion magazines, I love the creativity of the photography, the wild expression of what ever.
AND I know the damage it has played on setting the standard to what Beauty is. And how this standard has crippled many of us.
Because that standard is unreachable, we age, we gain weight, we have babies, and we feel the deep deep pain of not being "beautiful" any more. Its a pain I can not describe to a man (I tried yesterday) but we as woman feel it deeply.
And as I sat there, I felt the power of the work Nathalie Chapron and are doing.
Because at our table we ARE change the fucking standard!!
We ARE healing the wounds created by the standard of beauty. And we are creating our own standard.
We ARE reclaiming our own beauty. In this shape, this age, this weight.
This is why I do what I do. Not to change the fasion industry. But to heal the wounds caused by it.
For every woman, for one at least one moment, to see and feel, to reclaim their undeniable beauty.
Thank you to my epic epic partner and friend Nathalie for the work that you do in the world, for using adornment (colors/clothing/shopping) to reclaim the feminine. It's so import. We need you. Thank you for your never end lengths you go for each woman that comes across your path. I am so grateful for the work we to together!
#PhotoShootPARIS
It's been an incredible two days of photo-shoots here in Paris!
In the midst of fashion week, we spent the previous days shopping. Shopping in most luxurious mall in Paris, and little artisan boutiques with hand crafted one of a kind items.
Everyone got the most beautiful outfits in their pallet, which makes for such power and authenticity in each photograph. Why? Since each woman is in her right colors, she looks good no matter what! Nathalie Chapron you are just brilliant at what you do.
Once again, I am inspired and blown away by the beauty of women. Their sisterhood and support of each other, the creativity and playfulness, and their outrageous sexiness!!
Wow... I have come a long way
Check out these photographs of me! This first photographs was photograph about 6 years ago. And the second one a few months ago.
I have come a long way.
When I started my company one of my first clients, told me to wear black as not to distract the clients an to be as invisible as possible. It was actually in my contract I had to wear black (just so you know I didn’t work for her again). But there was part of me that believed it. Believed that I need to wear black and a suite to look professional. That I needed to dress this certain way to be taken seriously.
When I told the Kailash Sozzani, stylist that was working with at the time, she got so angry. She said I should be in colors, playful and fun. Everyone should see me and know I am there.
That was actually harder for me to accept. The only thing I could try was wearing colors but still in suits! HA!
And it felt good cause people noticed me.
See, when people see you, notice you, remember you, they are more likely to hire you!!
Over this years it’s been this journey of stepping into my edge of dressing who I am and how I want to express and feel. AND Not what is expected of me.
I want this for you.
Right now I wake up in the morning and think about what should I put on that would light the up, put a smile on my face, and allow that sexy side to shine though.
It’s an edge for me. To dress sexy at all, just out in my daily life and let the world see me that way. THEN i have played with the edge can I dress sexy while shooting. Is that possible?
See, growing up my mom was against sexy. She was a feminist and was angry at the world for sexualizing woman. She wanted me to live in a world that saw me for my brains and intellect.
And YES. THANK YOU MOM. I want a world like that too. I also want a world that all women are sexy because they are women. I want a world where women can express who they are with out consequence.
So that girley sexy side never got air time. She never got seen.
AND now she is, and she is so grateful I am listening and allow her out.
And I am finding that she can come out even when I am shooting. It brings out a expressing in me that brings more creativity and juice to my clients. And it also gives them permission to be how they want to be.
Especially while in Paris where there is a love for the feminine. Young woman, older woman, are seen as sexy.
It has given me a new freedom, a personal freedom, a freedom of choice. I am not trapped into anything that I MUST wear to fit the norms. Instead its’ what lights me up. Makes me feel. Good.
I want that for you too. As you get up this morning, I desire that you walk into you closet and put on the things that makes you feel the best and giggle with delight.
Can you see the difference in these two photographs??
Photographs are so powerful..
Let me back up and tell you the story.
Let me set the scene: we have climbed down 500 steps into the wild green jungle.
As soon as we are at the bottom I cant help but start photographing Jaiya looking oh so sexy in-front of the most epic waterfall I have ever seen.
I feel my desire to have a photo of me infront of the waterfall too! Ian totally comes to the recuse and starts to photograph me. I mean really, being photographed by Ian and then having Jaiya coaching me by telling me I look like a goddesss - it doesn't get better than that.
......
When I first started putting pleasure first into practice in my life ... I started doing things that brought joy and pleasure into my life, and then I stopped doing things that didn't.
Now, my practice has changed. It's deepened. It's more about how can I open to more pleasure right now, doing exactly what I am doing in this moment. If it's an epic moment or a mundane one.
I ask the question: can I open more? Can I notice, feel, and allow more in? What pleasure/sensation is available to me right now?
........
So that's exactly what I did right there infront in front of the waterfall as Ian took pictures of me.
And guess what it was electrifying, I could feel the power of the waterfall ripple through my body like electricity. The cold spray of water on my skin giving me goose bumps.
I could feel the delight of having the camera on me. It was quit a moment...
(And then guess what happening. I had to stop. My capatictiy of pleasure and joy had reached its limit. And that's ok. As I expand in more and more joy, it's like I am working a muscle. And that muscle is getting stronger.)
Now I know that you might be like, well, yes that really easy at a waterfall in Costa Rica.
But We need those epic moments so that in the mundane we remember,
And now everyone I look at this image I can feel all the sensations in my body, I can feel my expansion.
You can see bellow the difference between, before I allowed more pleasure in and after!! It's so different!!
And that's the power photography has. I have that second photograph so that I can remember ever second of my expansion and what I am capable of feeling and experiencing.
And and I sit in a busy airport tired with hardly any sleep l, looking at this photograph and opening right here right now and allow more, more pleasure, more awareness into this moment. (and guess what a woman start to sing right here in the crowed airport Starbucks)
Creativity can happen anywhere
My last night in Costa Rica, I got the chance to work with another photographer. How fun right? Can you see me counting down the hours and minutes till my own shoot!!
I was so exited, I spent hours delighting in different outfits and jewelry, to go with different rooms and ideas. Dancing around the house giggling with delight. The light was perfect, it was overcast, but the sun was going down and it was turning into the most beautiful sunset.
And then, I get a text "I am running late, I will be there in an hour."
I almost cried .. I was bummed. My visions, the photographs I wanted, died right there with that txt.
In an hour it would be dark.
(And it's a story with a great reminder.)
I almost told him not to come. What's the point? I wanted sunset sexy pictures!
He came anyway. And I am so glad he did. We used what we had available, which was the lights of the city, the lights of the pool, and even the lights from our cells phones.
What fun!
Creativity can happen anywhere.
And...
Creativity is aided by restriction - it's like it needs restriction, it need a creative container to make magic. And magic we did create.
And then I also started taking photos of me before he got there and I created a photograph that I love.
Funny Story Alert
Funny story alert:
Yesterday was part 1 of Jaiya and Ian's private branding shoot. We started at the volcano then headed to a waterfall. After 500 steps down into a ravine, we finally made it to the base of the water fall.. it was so massively huge! It had such power... and so much spray!
I stood there thinking "shit .... I am not prepared to protected my camera from all this water." People where getting soaked just by the spray.
BUT we couldn't miss getting the water fall photos.
What was I to do?
I am made a quick decision and used my shirt to protect my camera and photographed them in my bra! Hahaha! It added an extra zing to the shoot for sure.
Oh my, what I do to get a good photo... I know many of you have stories of what lengths I have gone to in your shoots... it would be fun to hear them!
VIDEO: Live truths from Costa Rica
After five amazing days on retreat Jaiya Ma and Ian Ferguson share some of our thoughts about the retreat and about the erotic photos shoots and what does that actually mean?
(And it's funny.. I watched myself in the the video before I posted and cringed as I saw myself mumble/stumble, not get words nor thoughts correct, and I didn't wanted to post it.
Thinking I should wait till I have a video where I get it "right." But that's exactly what we talk about in the video.. how important it is to be real and authentic ... so here goes!!)
VIDEO: What is a Erotic PhotoShoot?
What does erotic persona photo-shoot have in common with a wildly visible branding photo-shoot????
(For those who don't know I am in Costa Rica at Jaiya Ma 's Advanced Sex Skills retreat. Every couple get a erotic persona photo-shoot with me!! Super yummy)