Creative Coaching: Kyle Carpenter

When Birmingham, Alabama-based photographer Kyle Carpenter started taking on larger commercial clients, he reached out to Wonderful Machine and joined our Creative Coaching program to help him hone his portfolio. As a still life, brand narrative, and portrait photographer he needed to showcase various types of work in a cohesive way.

When Kyle and I started working together he was growing his brand from small shoots to more commercial projects that required more attention to detail, meticulous planning, and larger budget management. Through creative coaching, he hoped to grow his business by attracting more of his dream commercial clients.

Wonderful Machine’s Creative Coaching program offers an individualized approach to helping photographers with various roadblocks during the beginning stages of their commercial careers. We treat each creative coaching project individually, as there are no two photographers alike. Some creative coaching projects are based heavily on photo editing, while some focus on creating work to appeal to the photographers’ desired clientele. In some cases, we also focus on branding, web design, and marketing. 

I spent the last (almost) 20 years working as a professional photographer and producer. My experience with clients all over the world has taught me what people are seeking, and I’m always happy to be able to use that experience to help other photographers refine their work and marketing materials to ultimately grow their businesses.

Kyle and I worked together from February 2020 through June 2021. During that time, we planned many self-assigned shoots and did a fair amount of photo editing across his portfolio. Kyle is an extremely active photographer and shoots more than most I know! After a project was completed, we would edit images from shoots and refine the gallery on his website.

During this process, we created a new curated home page with rotating images and a recent work gallery to highlight new work he was proud of. We also reorganized his galleries to align with his photographic specialties and better showcase his work to potential clients. He originally had a separate About me and a Contact page but we decided to simplify the navigation and condensed those two pages into a single About page.

Once we were satisfied with Kyle’s portfolio and website structure we started discussing the marketing aspect of photography. We had conversations to identify who his dream clients were, and who he thought were attainable clients. Then we worked together on lists of prospective clients and discussed possible marketing strategies including emailers, printed portfolio design, and even promotional zines.

Since we worked together, Kyle has grown as a photographer and was able to secure his first National magazine cover for HealthTech. He also completed a large-scale lifestyle and brand narrative shoot for Moore’s Marinade. Kyle recently joined a creative agency as an in-house photographer and has continued to work on more commercial projects through his new role.

Here’s what he had to say about creative coaching:

I’ve had creative coaching sessions with Bryan Sheffield for over a year now. Not only has he become a good friend, he has also helped me so much in pushing the creative aspects of my product work. 

Need help overhauling your portfolio and website to attract dream clients?
Check out our other Creative Coaching case studies or send us an email!