An approachable expert: showing athletes and active adults what it’s like working with him

When Josh Berlat realized there was a gap between how his practice was being presented and how he wanted people to perceive it. As a Boise Branding Photographer, I knew this gap needed to be bridged to better connect with leads.

Josh is a regenerative medicine physician at Parallel Sports Medicine in Boise, Idaho, and his scope PRP treatments for athletes and active adults dealing with injuries. He wanted his website and social media to better reflect both his expertise and the experience he provides.

My goal for the photography was pretty straightforward. Josh wanted to be perceived as an approachable expert while still giving the images the polished feel of a premium regenerative service.

Showing What Working With Josh Looks Like

For this branding session, we photographed in a clinical office setting I have access to here in Boise.

Rather than only photographing a series of portraits, we wanted to show more of what an actual interaction with Josh might look like.

We simulated a consultation, photographed Josh interacting with model clients and discussing treatment options, and created images of him working with ultrasound equipment that he routinely uses in his practice.

We made sure to create hero images and detail photographs. This gave Josh a broader library of images to use across his website and social media rather than relying on a handful of traditional headshots.

That variety is especially important in branding photography today. Of course, a business needs images of the person behind it, but it also needs photographs that help explain what they actually do.

Branding Photography for a Specialized Medical Practice

Josh’s work is aimed at athletes and active people, including middle-aged adults who are finding that injuries aren’t quite as easy to recover from as they once were.

His work includes PRP for soft tissue injuries such as chronic tendonopathies and other soft tissue injuries. From Josh’s perspective, PRP uses the body’s own systems to help facilitate healing in areas that can be slow to recover, such as tendons, joints, and muscles.

The medical specifics are Josh’s expertise, not mine. My job as the photographer was to understand enough about what he does to make photographs that communicate it. That distinction matters to me.

If I’m photographing a physician, I don’t need to pretend to be an expert in regenerative medicine. But I do need to understand who they’re trying to reach, how they want to be perceived and what makes their practice different. Then I can figure out how to communicate those things visually. This is all part of the intake process!

More Than a Professional Headshot

There is certainly a place for a good headshot. But for a business trying to establish a brand, a headshot only answers one myopic question: what does this person look like?

A full branding session can answer quite a few more.

What do you do? Who do you work with? What does your environment feel like? What equipment or tools are part of your work? What does investing your services look like?

For Josh, that meant creating polished portraits alongside images of consultations, client interactions, ultrasound-facilitated treatments and details from the process. we wanted to emphasize what clients can expect during a treatment with him. 

The result is a library he can pull from depending on what he needs to communicate.

Closing the Gap Between Your Business and Its Presentation

One of the things I found interesting about this project was the reason behind it.

Josh already knew what kind of experience he offers. The problem was that the way his business was being presented didn’t completely communicate that experience.

Photography can’t create the business for you. But it can help close the gap between the business you’ve already built and what a potential client sees when they first encounter it online.

That applies to a regenerative medicine physician just as much as it does to another business.

If you’ve invested time into becoming good at what you do, but your website and marketing still don’t quite look like the business you’ve built, it may be time to update the photography.

As your Boise Branding Photographer I work with businesses in Boise to create branding photography built around what they actually do and how they want to be perceived. If your current images aren’t telling that story, I’d love to talk about what a branding session could look like for your business.