Creative Headshots in the Bay Area

I love working with clients who are willing to explore new visual styles for headshot photography. So here’s a big shout-out to Traction, an SF-based marketing accelerator, whose team embraced the power of play and experimentation for leadership portraits. I’m delighted with the results. Thank you, Traction, your team is awesome! Click thumbs to view full-size images.  

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Headshot Photography

Stranger Scenes: Portraits

In no particular order. A barista, a cat with a human, an aspiring groom, a medical student, a piercing artist, and a businessman, quiet and moody like Kafka. But above all, strangers; first and foremost, we’re strangers. That’s our primary role. We’re quick to forget it because we cling to titles, personas, and facades. Street portrait photography, at least as I try to practice it, sets this or that identity aside and aims for the heart of the matter. Click thumbnails to view full-sized images.

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neilson corporate headshot photography bay area san francisco mubadala sales force tower stylized black and white
Headshot Photography

Personal Brand Photography

Personal brand photography is a powerful marketing tool for executive coaches and strategic advisors in the San Francisco Bay Area. It helps them develop their persona and present themselves professionally in a tightly contested market. A personal brand photoshoot builds credibility and professionalism, bolsters their online presence, and makes connections with audiences and potential clients. If you’re interested in learning more, I’m happy to brainstorm with you. In the meantime, please click on thumbnails for full-size images.

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Headshot Photography

Unsocial Media

neilson photography getting outside reading climbing trees

That’s my daughter P., a wonder and a joy. I share this photo because it says something about the importance of the Old Ways. Getting outside, climbing trees, and reading books, analog preferably.

As you may know, depression and anxiety have spiked sharply among boys and girls since 2010, but especially for girls—and especially “liberal” girls. Boys and girls across the political spectrum are suffering, but liberal girls are suffering most. Why? 

One of my favorite thinkers and writers is Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist who studies morality and is “making sense of the momentous sociological, cultural, and epistemological changes that occurred in many nations in the early 2010s, which gave us the chaos, fragmentation, and outrage that began to set in by the mid-2010s.”

Although there are many causes of this transformation, Haidt identifies social media as “the largest single cause.”

He has recently launched a Substack called After Babel. It’s not paywalled, and I highly encourage you to subscribe to it if you’re interested (and worried) about the unintended effects of social media and what we can do about them in the future.

Peruse After Babel here: https://lnkd.in/gezD9cHR

Headshots: Model, Actor, and Beyond

When you’re fortunate enough to photograph a former actor and model turned aspiring director, your work should intersect with three overlapping worlds, blending auditions and performances, runways and fashion, and casts and screenplays into a set of visuals worthy of the silver screen. At least that was my sincere ambition during this recent photo shoot. Click thumbnails to view full-size images. 

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neilson corporate headshot photography bay area san francisco mubadala sales force tower stylized black and white
Headshot Photography