One Year, Three Shoots: A Brand Photography Case Study, Lucy Upton, The Children’s Dietitian
When Lucy first got in touch, she already had a career that most people would consider extraordinary.
A children’s dietitian with years of NHS experience, a published author. A media presence that spans television appearances, brand partnerships with household names such as Pampers and Tesco, and a role as the expert voice behind Emma’s Diary – the pack given to new mothers across the UK when they have a baby. Over 100,000 people follow her on Instagram, drawn to her warm, evidence-based approach to helping parents feed their children with confidence.
She is, in every sense, someone who knows what she’s doing.
And yet, like so many of the women I work with, she knew that the images she had weren’t doing justice to her work.
She found me through Sasha Brown, her wedding makeup artist – a client of mine whose brand photographs had caught her eye. Something about the warmth and authenticity in those images stayed with her. When the time came to invest in her own brand photography, she got in touch. And that was the beginning of a year I won’t forget.
Shoot one: The foundation
Lucy’s first shoot was about establishing the visual language of her brand. We worked in a beautiful house, spending most of our time in the kitchen – the natural home of a children’s nutritionist – where we photographed her preparing food, planning meals, researching recipes and adapting them for little ones.
Her book, The Ultimate Guide to Children’s Nutrition, was about to launch. So we wove it naturally into the shoot – Lucy holding it, working alongside it, the book present in the background as she prepped food at the counter. Portraits with the book, lifestyle shots that told the story of an expert who is also, clearly, a real and approachable human being.
We did headshots too. The kind that work across everything – social media, press features, the more formal academic publications that quote her expertise.
It was a strong start, a solid, considered foundation. And then we waited to see what the world made of it.
Shoot two: The real life
By the time Lucy came back for her second shoot, she had a clearer sense of what her audience responded to. And what they responded to, it turned out, was Lucy as a mother – not just Lucy as an expert.
Her daughter Aurelia was at the heart of this shoot. We photographed the two of them baking together in the kitchen, sitting down to eat, heading to the allotments where Lucy showed Aurelia vegetables and fruit growing in the ground and got genuinely, infectiously excited about it.
We spent time in the garden – checking on bean plants, playing in the playhouse, doing the quiet, ordinary things that make up a life with a small child.
We were careful throughout. Lucy values her daughter’s privacy online, so we largely kept Aurelia’s face out of shot – working instead with beautiful compositions that captured the warmth and connection between them without putting her little girl on the internet. I did steal a few frames, just for Lucy to keep – those ones aren’t for anyone else!
We also created a few short films, which are always part of each Subscription shoot. The films showed Lucy and Aurelia interacting, rolling out cookie dough, little fingers squishing and kneading, quick cuddles and giggles. These little lifestyle video clips bring warmth, movement and energy to your online presence, which help your audience to connect with you as a human being, not just a business owner.
What this shoot did was deepen the story. It showed that the woman advising parents on feeding their children is also a parent herself, navigating exactly the same moments and the same questions. That authenticity, earned, not performed, is worth more than any perfectly styled flat lay.
Shoot three: The evolution
By the third shoot, we arrived with two rounds of learning already in hand.
We knew which images had performed. Which ones had been picked up by press. Which had worked for Lucy’s brand partnerships and which had felt most natural on social media. We also knew what was coming up for Lucy – what she might need images to support in the months ahead.
We hired a beautiful house through Styled Home Studios and spent the day building on everything we’d learned. More kitchen prep – strawberries and kiwis, snacks and drinks – but with greater variety and more considered compositions. Lucy on her laptop and on the sofa with a cup of tea. Lucy on the kitchen island, completely herself, sitting by the fireplace, relaxed and laughing.
And more formal headshots, because her profile had continued to grow and the publications quoting her had grown with it.
By this point, something had shifted that I notice in every long-term client relationship. Lucy was completely at ease. Not just comfortable – genuinely, naturally herself in front of the camera. The kind of ease that only comes from having done this before, from trusting the person behind the lens, from knowing that the process works.
The images from shoot three are some of the best of the three. Not because the earlier ones weren’t good – they were. But because everything compounds. The trust, the knowledge, the understanding of what works. It all builds.
Lucy left a review after we finished that I’ve been thinking about ever since. She said the photographs had captured the essence of her business in a way she never knew was possible. That they had outperformed every headshot and brand image she’d had before. That she’d used them across media, social media, and to support her book launch.
She called me an asset to her business beyond words.
I’m sharing this not to boast – though I won’t pretend it didn’t mean the world to me – but because I think it illustrates something important about what a year of brand photography can actually do.
One shoot gives you a starting point. Three shoots, spread across a year, give you something else entirely. They give you imagery that grows with you, a visual story that deepens and evolves. A relationship with a photographer who genuinely understands your business, your audience and your ambitions.
And they give you the confidence – image by image, shoot by shoot – to show up as the person your business needs you to be.
Lucy Upton is a children’s dietitian, author of The Ultimate Guide to Children’s Nutrition, and one of the UK’s leading voices on feeding children. You can find her on Instagram and via her website https://www.thechildrensdietitian.co.uk/
If you’d like to talk about what a year of brand photography could look like for your business, I’d love to hear from you. The annual subscription is designed for exactly this – three shoots, monthly payments, and imagery that keeps pace with where you’re going
