Case Study: Ana Melikian
Ana Melikian is a speaker who wants to spread the word about positive psychology and how we can really tap into our potential as humans. She has a deep and diverse background, with a PhD in psychology, and years of experience as a therapist and professor. In the last decade, she switched away from academia and therapy to life coaching and eventually to business coaching. She also hosts a podcast called The Mindset Zone. Ana believes that happy people lead to successful businesses, whether it’s a solo business or a big organization. She wanted her photos to reflect her evolution, capture her current sense of comfort and self-confidence, and build her new brand as a professional keynote speaker.
Ana’s Mood Board
In her first cut of her mood board, Ana picked a few images of celebrity speakers with short hair, focusing on what she wanted to look like. After some encouragement, she let her imagination free. Her mood board is gorgeous: full of emotion-invoking close-ups, detail shots, with a sense of comfort, joy and serenity. Her board clearly reflected her desire to use props and visual metaphors that related to her beliefs and values.
Some photos from Ana’s session
Ana is working on a keynote speech called Happiness Fallacies, where she debunks common myths about happiness, and instead, talks about how to get to a deeper, more genuine happiness. Her talk has a natural story arc, incorporating personal stories, visual metaphors and meaningful props. We decided to capture the entire arc of her speech: what it looks like when she’s preparing a talk, various concepts that parallel the ideas in her keynote and finally, what it feels like after delivering a successful, transformative speech.
What Ana says …
“The photos I had were 7 years old, and very limited. Nowadays, visual variety is essential; we have to show different dimensions of ourselves in our brand. When I saw Raj’s website, the style and variety felt right in a way that I couldn’t articulate before.
The keynote I’m working on is the most important thing for me right now. When we landed on the idea of using its narrative arc for our shoot, it made it very easy for me to embody those emotions instead of just ‘posing’!
When I heard that the shoot would take 4 hours, I felt a little ambivalent. But in reality, the time just flew by! The structure of the session, with breaks and all, helped me feel energized and excited throughout the day.
I wanted the photos to represent me where I am today, and they do. My first reaction was: WHOA! My friends agree that these photos truly capture my essence.
If you’re a coach, consultant, speaker or trainer, you know that you're you are the service and the product and the face of your business. You know how important it is to have something that represents you visually out there. Working with Raj will allow you to level up your game in terms of your photos.”