Why I Photograph Women Building Their Own Thing

For a long time, my calendar was mostly families and couples — soft light, someone's kid refusing to look at the camera, a lot of joyful chaos. I love that work, and it's not going anywhere. But somewhere over the last few months, a different kind of session started sneaking into my week: women showing up alone, laptop bag still on their shoulder, asking for photos of themselves doing the thing — running the business, building the brand, being the founder. I didn't plan for this to become part of what I do. It found me through the Creative Collective and ATX Creators, rooms full of women who were building something often while also raising kids or holding down a full-time job or figuring out who they are without either. Stretched thin in the most familiar way. I started photographing them almost by accident, and I haven't wanted to stop.

Here's what I quickly noticed: branding photos have a reputation problem. People picture stiff headshots, forced smiles, a laptop prop that's clearly never opened a file in its life. And I get it, a lot of branding photography is that. But it doesn't have to be. The sessions I love most look almost nothing like a corporate headshot. I'm not trying to make anyone look like a magazine ad for "girlboss energy" — I'm trying to make a photo that, a year from now, still feels like them.

That's the same standard I hold every session to, whether it's a family of five or a solo founder with a business card that didn't exist six months ago. There's something else I didn't expect: how much these sessions ask of me creatively. With a family session, there's a rhythm, kids, motion, candid chaos I know how to chase. With a founder session, the "candid" has to come from somewhere else. It comes from asking someone to talk about their business while I shoot, not while they pose. It comes from catching the two seconds after they've stopped trying to look a certain way and started just being in the room. That's the shot. It's the same instinct behind every polaroid and every unposed family photo I've ever loved — I'm just aiming it somewhere new.

I think this shift matters to me for a reason bigger than portfolio variety, though. A lot of the women I photograph are doing more than one hard thing at once — building a career and raising a family, building a business and trying to remember what they look like when they're not exhausted. I want the photos I take of them to hold both truths: how much they're carrying, and how much they're still, unmistakably, themselves underneath it. I also relate to them as a woman entrepreneur myself who also holds a full time job, running a photography business and having a family to care for.

That's why when the Creative Collective asked me to be the featured photographer for their Founder Photoshoot Day this month, I said yes without much hesitating. It's a small, one-day thing — a handful of sessions, five edited photos each, one week turnaround — but it's exactly the kind of work I want more of. Not a headshot mill. A room full of women who are building their own thing, for an afternoon, being photographed like it.

If that's you — if you've got a business or a brand or a body of work you're proud of and don't have a single photo of yourself that captures it — I'd love to be the one who takes it.