Tracy Peto, Honley, West Yorkshire

Personal brand shoot for Tracy Peto, hair and beauty salon

Yesterday I headed over to Tracy Peto salon, Honley, West Yorkshire for a little personal brand photoshoot. This was for my ongoing Honley project and it was the first time I had been out for the past month (due to lockdown) so it was great to get out.

Can do attitude

It’s funny as my expectations going into the shoot was that I would walk in and customers would be under hair dryers. However, when I did arrive, Tracy was in an empty shop as Tuesday’s is a day when she deals with the accounts and does some training for her apprentice.

Right, time for a plan B. After just a few seconds of meeting Tracy, I could tell that she had a can do attitude and would be up for anything. So, we just started to create some pictures. I’ve said it many times before but the Honley site is about the people and showing these personalities and this was certainly the case for Tracy Peto.

Obstacles

Other obstacles that existed was the salon had been decorated for Christmas and also lots of COVID screens were up. The pictures that I shoot for Honley need to be timeless and we’re trying our best not to show too much COVID (although some we can’t avoid) so a bit of rearranging and we were ready to rock.

Fake it, until you make it

With no customers in the shop it was going to be interesting. I had an idea that if I photographed Tracy through the mirror it would look like she was actually cutting someone’s hair. Add to the equation asking questions “where you going on holiday”? Then we could make the pictures seem genuine. It was a great way to break the ice and just have a good laugh.

Bits of detail

Most hairdressers and salons have ranges of products and Tracy is no exception. I think part of a personal brand shoot should be about the the products and what people sell, so I shot a few of the point of sale stands just to add a little bit more into the shoot.

Plan C

We were now on Plan C as we had finished working with Plan B. Plan C was to rope Tracy’s apprentice into being a customer for her hair doing. So, as soon as she walked through the door, we didn’t give her time to think and say no. It was back to faking having her hair cut. Fortunately we were having a good laugh and when we’ve reached this stage there’s pretty much nothing we can’t do.

Spooky hand

Tracy then pulled out this spooky hand! I really wasn’t sure what was happening now but I just went with it. Apparently this spooky looking hand thing is a training device to hep people practice on nails. It attaches to the desk with a clamp and it’s like a pretend customer. Perfect, so Tracy started teaching her apprentice how to apply nail varnish which made a good picture.

Finally

Finally I wanted to grab just a few shots of Tracy outside of her premises. Being Winter and Yorkshire it was pretty cold so I only wanted this to take a few seconds. It’s funny as every time I want to take a picture like this, Honley high street seems to be the busiest place in the world. So, a quick dart into the road and a couple of pictures later I was happy.

The shoot was ace fun! Initially I thought “oh no, what am I going to do” but I know I have to make it work. But, it just illustrated to me how much easier everything can be when you’ve got someone who is up for anything.

If you fancy a personal brand shoot then give me a shout – john@johnsteelphotography.com