June 2024
In early June, I had the immense pleasure of meeting up with two other local photographers (who's work I admired but have never met in person before) for a headshot swap! If you're wondering what that is, we literally all met and took photos of each other for our own branding purposes, and then shared them with each other! It was such a fun way to meet new people who are in the industry and also get a little branding photography practice in. Here's how our session went!
The photographers featured in this blog are Tori Archer Photography and Liezl's Lens Photography. Linked are their Instagram pages if you'd like to check out their work!
When Tori made an Instagram story looking for photographers interested in doing a headshot swap, I responded to her immediately. I desperately needed some updated branding photos, and I also had been following her work for a while and absolutely loved it! We set up a date right before my 26th birthday at sunset at Libby Hill Park, and I was so excited. Later, she invited Liezl to join us all the way from NOVA, (the more the merrier!) and we all three met around 6 in the evening to start our session.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little nervous to meet two other photographers who I'd never met outside of a screen before. The only other photographer I'd worked with was my close friend Dom Khun from VCUPhoto, who took my amazing and gorgeous first set of branding photos for my website. However, I've been looking to connect with other photographers in the area, whether creatively, professionally, or in a friendly way, so ultimately I was SO happy to connect with them. Once we talked for a bit, we got to the fun part: shooting!!
It's always so cool to see how other creatives work. They said it felt funny because they were always the ones behind the lens! They were naturals at posing and photographing, and even though there was 3 of us, we were all shooting simultaneously.
Here are some images that they took of me on this cobblestone path we started at:
After we got warmed up, we headed to an iconic view of the city. As a Richmond based photographer, I really wanted some photos with the city skyline in the background.
As we walked to the top of the hill, we decided to mix it up a bit with some sitting poses using this bench next to these adorable little orange blooms.
Afterwards, we decided to literally step inside the cute flower bushes behind us (which is big for me considering my fear of insects). At this time, the sun was setting and just peeking through the trees and creating the most gorgeous backlight for us. I loved the "pretending to look at my camera" poses.
Lastly, we wanted to get some walking shots of each other, which we did with the rays of golden hour seeping through the cloud line. We did this a couple of times for each of us, and every time we laughed about how funny it felt to be fake laughing!
When we all felt satisfied with our shots, we took a couple selfies together:
Look at that cloudy sunset skyline!!!
Honorable Mentions:
After lots of fake and real laughs, we decided to wrap up our session for the evening. It was such a lovely experience to photograph each other with these two talented ladies. They made me feel so comfortable in front of the camera and we captured some beautiful images together. I can't wait to add them to this website!! I hope to work with them again soon~!
Remember to check out Tori Archer Photographer and Liezl's Lens on Instagram! AND don't forget to give me a follow too while you're at it ;-)
Thanks for reading!! ♡
Photos by Tori Archer Photography, Liezl's Lens, and Memories by Marlena LLC.
All edits by Memories by Marlena LLC.
