A Cohesive Visual Brand

Welcome to my brand new brand! This has been an incredible journey and I am thrilled to finally share it all with you. It’s funny, this began as a half idea during a short coaching program I did back in May. I knew that I wanted to update my website copy, and you can see most of that over here and scattered across these fresh pages. The more I talked to Kari and these other fabulous women, the more I realized that I wanted more: I was ready for a complete level-up across the board, and that started with finding someone to help me bring that vision into being. Enter Jenna from Absolute Jem! We met on Zoom and bonded right away. I knew she could help me make it happen, and she really really did.


It was a journey for me, too, because it began with what felt like a simple questionnaire, and was anything but. From what kind of cocktail my brand would be (a Cosmopolitan - sweet and classy!) to how I envisioned the next five or 10 years, it leveled up my own thinking of what I offer and do. Took that seed of an idea and grew it into something truly stunning.


First of all, I have a brand!!

I've grown and discovered more about myself and what I truly love doing with photography over the past four years, but little of that was represented by my website and social media presence. There certainly wasn't much consistency. Jenna helped me see the whole picture, and together we determined brand keywords that fed into the mood board below.

  • fresh
  • helpful
  • laughter
  • elevated
  • easygoing 
  • natural


I’m so glad to see my journey brought to light in this visual aesthetic, and I am totally in love with it. Jenna saw what I wanted and where I was going, and raced ahead to greet me.


A Full Service Experience

It’s made me think an awful lot about what I do and why I do it and you, my amazing amazing clients and friends. One of the questions on that early questionnaire was, why people choose me. I began to write my answer right then and there…and then I paused, and looked at the incredible testimonials I have received these several years. Ultimately they showed me one thing: the complete client experience. "The ease of communication and the process" and "made the entire process easy" to "easygoing and worked well with my kids" and "patient with their teen/preteen nonsense." I don't know if you know many entrepreneurs but now you know at least one: these brought me to tears. It’s something that’s been hovering in the back of my mind for awhile now, but to see it over and over, really made me think. It's part of why I focus SO MUCH on the client experience, because great photos should be a given.


I offer location tips and a forthcoming Location Guide, a comprehensive Style Guide that helps people pick colors and get the whole family ready - and I'm here for conversations about the ones you've picked and which would go best together on camera, and complete the look for the whole family. I’ve got you!


And you, in turn, have got me: I’ll take you through the complete brand updates below, but I am incredibly grateful to all of you for helping me get to where I am, discover what I love, and embrace change through this hectic, beautiful entrepreneur life! 


PS - one of my favorite stories from this process is below! >>

Decorative accents to use on a dime. Note the cherry blossoms - she knows me well!

Aren't these pretty! The other font is the one you see right here, the sans-serif one across my site

Patterns I can use anywhere!

The Mood Board for designing Sarah Thayer Photography

PS: Connections from Around the World


One of my favorite stories from this entire process came towards the end, when we had settled on the (incredible) mood board for the brand. Unbeknownst to me, Jenna winnowed down my Pinterest board and researched to find the original creators for each image - then credited/tagged them all in an Instagram post. Fellow creatives, I know you appreciate this! That was wonderful on its own, but there's more: one of the images came from a creator in South Africa (!), who was very excited to be featured and to help us figure out the whole style story for my brand. She made a post about it and tagged both of us back! Too cool.