Colour, Canvas & Creative Space: Personal Branding Photography with Artist Carly Gilliatt

Personal branding photography for artists and creatives · Lincoln, Lincolnshire

There are certain shoots that remind you why you fell in love with photography in the first place.

Carly Gilliatt's was one of them.

I came to Carly through the best possible route, word of mouth from a friend of hers I'd previously photographed, which is honestly one of the loveliest things that can happen as a photographer. Someone whose work you've captured passes your name along to someone else in their creative world, and suddenly you're standing at the bottom of a beautiful Lincoln garden, looking at a studio that genuinely made me stop in my tracks.

Let me set the scene. Gorgeous garden. At the end of it, a light-filled studio that Carly has made entirely her own. Canvases everywhere. Paint on every surface. A floor that tells the story of hundreds of paintings made over years of practice. Quotes and reference images pinned to the walls. Fairy lights strung along the ceiling. And in the middle of it all, Carly… warm, laughing, completely in her element.

I was immediately at home.

Who is Carly Gilliatt?

Carly is a Lincoln-based abstract painter whose work is rooted in landscape. Colour-rich, layered, atmospheric paintings designed to feed the senses and bring what she describes as an uplifting sense of joy. Her canvases are bold and alive, built up in layers of texture that you want to stand close to and also very far away from, because both distances reveal something different. They're the kind of paintings that make a room feel more itself.

Look at those canvases on the walls in the images and you'll see exactly what I mean, those soft pinks, warm oranges, moody greens and greys. Landscapes distilled into feeling rather than fact.

What the shoot was about

Carly had two clear needs coming into this shoot. First, proper portraits. Professional headshots that she could use for exhibitions, press, and her online presence. But not the standard white-wall-corporate variety. Portraits that actually looked like her. Relaxed, real, in context.

Second, the images that told the story of her process. The making, the materials and the environment. Because in an age when so much of how we discover artists is through a screen, showing where and how the work is created matters enormously. It brings an audience closer, tt builds trust. It makes the paintings feel like they came from somewhere real, because they did.

We kept the shoot focused and intentional, portraits, materials, action shots and environment and the studio did half the work for us.

The details I always love

Ask any photographer who shoots artists and creatives, and they'll tell you the same thing: the edges are where the magic is. Or at least they are for me.

Not just the finished painting on the wall, though Carly's canvases are genuinely beautiful, but the remnants. The paint-spattered floor that maps out years of making. The dungarees worn soft with colour. The brushes in jars. The palette that looks like an abstract artwork in itself. These are the things that tell a deeper story about a creative life, and I will always, always get a little distracted photographing them.

And the quotes. I love a studio that has quotes on the walls, artists in particular seem to choose them so intentionally, and they say so much about what drives someone, what they return to when the work feels hard. I always find myself reading every single one.

One of my favourite shots from the whole shoot was Carly standing in the archway of her studio doorway, natural light flooding in behind her, her garden stretching out beyond, canvases and reference images filling the walls on either side. She's laughing. Her dungarees are covered in paint. She looks completely, entirely herself.

That's the shot. That's always the shot.

She's also got an Open Studio coming up

If you're local to Lincoln and you'd love to see Carly's work in person and trust me, you really should, she has an Open Studio on 27th and 28th June. Go. Take someone with you. It'll be worth it.

Follow Carly on Instagram to stay up to date with her work and the open studio details.

If you're an artist, maker or creative in Lincoln or Lincolnshire and you're ready for professional photos that actually reflect your work, your space and your personality, whether it's for exhibitions, your website, or just a proper bank of content to draw from - I'd love to hear from you.