Client: Tyler Hill, Founder and Designer, Tyler Hill Design. Charleston, SC

By the time Tyler Hill asked me to shoot his personal brand, I had already been photographing his work for years. The trust wasn’t something we had to build in a single afternoon, it was already there.

Photographing the Work Before the Person

I met Tyler years before I ever photographed him. He and his business partner Michael Mitchell owned a high-end art gallery on King Street in Charleston, and around that time Tyler started designing light fixtures alongside another client of mine. I was already behind the camera for that work, photographing the pieces themselves, long before Tyler ever asked me to photograph him.

By the time he launched his own company, Tyler Hill Design, later rebranded Transparent, high-end lighting and furniture produced in Italy and sold through designer-only showrooms, we had already spent years working together. He didn’t need to explain his taste to me. I had been photographing it for a long time.

Building a Library, Not a Headshot

A new company launch needed more than a single headshot. Tyler needed a library built for every place his brand would actually show up: headshots and hero shots, editorial portraits and environmental proof of him at work, images built for an about page and images built for print, formal enough for a press feature and alive enough for a website that needed to feel like a real person built this, not a factory.

This library was built across a few different sessions, in studio and on the same set where his product photography happens, moving through wardrobe changes and setups to build range without losing consistency.

Five Looks, Two Sessions

The Maker. Shot in black and white on the same set where Tyler’s own product photography happens, sitting and adjusting one of his large ironwork chandeliers by hand, backlit into near-silhouette. Built for his press kit, this is proof of craft, evidence that a design brand is real work, not just a polished brand image.

The Piece. A warmer, more personal register than anything else in the library. Tyler seated on a white background in a chambray shirt and khakis, one of his own sculptural pendant chandeliers hanging in frame beside him. Also built for the press kit, this ties the person directly to the product without needing text to explain the connection.

The Suit. The most formal register in the library, tailored and press-ready. Built for the placements that need to read as established, not emerging.

The Leather Jacket. Sharper and more editorial, a shirt and tie underneath but the polish traded for something with more edge. One frame has him holding his black cowboy hat, a small nod to his Austin, Texas roots tucked into an otherwise polished set. Built for the places that need personality on the page, not just credibility.

The Shirtsleeves. No jacket, tie still on, the most stripped-down register in the set. Built for the everyday use cases, a website bio, a casual feature, anywhere the brand needed to feel reachable instead of remote.

No Warm-Up Needed

Direction on a shoot like this usually spends real time getting a subject comfortable in front of the camera before anything honest happens. Tyler and I skipped most of that. The comfort was already built from years of working together on his product photography, so the session could move fast through three wardrobe changes and a real emotional range in each one, instead of spending the whole day just getting somewhere close to natural.

That kind of range doesn’t require years together. It requires direction that gets a subject past the version of themselves they think they’re supposed to show up as, serious in the suit, sharper in the leather jacket, most relaxed in shirtsleeves, rather than defaulting to the same expression in every outfit. With Tyler, years of working together meant we skipped straight to it.

What the Library Includes

Tyler left with a library built to cover everything a growing brand actually needs: headshots and hero shots, editorial frames and environmental proof of the work itself, formal enough for press and warm enough for a website. It’s the kind of library that doesn’t need a reshoot every time a new use comes up.

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Your work is distinct. Your photos should be too. Let’s talk about what yours should look like.