Award-winning photographer, strategist, and writer based in San Francisco.

I help businesses show up more fully in the world.

With a background in both visual design and business strategy, I offer a unique blend of expertise to my clients. Whether it’s crafting mission statements or shooting editorial-style images for your brand, I help you hone in on what makes you uniquely you. We then have a lot of fun figuring out the most effective ways to express that essence to your clients and potential clients — clearly, consistently, and powerfully.

Services

  • Images that tell your story. Who you are. What you do. How you uniquely do it. What you value most. From product to portraits to environmental, I create a nuanced visual experience of your brand.

  • I offer both editorial style and business portraiture. Whether we’re shooting against a solid backdrop or in your favorite cafe, I shoot until I know I’ve captured something special, authentic, and uniquely you. For examples of various portrait styles I’ve done, go here.

  • Often clients have a lot of the pieces and know instinctively what’s important to their business, but are having difficultly expressing it succinctly and powerfully. After immersing myself in your world through conversations and reading, I work with you to (re)write your mission, values, and any other foundational elements that bridge business and brand, giving you the tools needed to better communicate to your leaders, employees, partners, and customers what you’re all about.

  • As your business grows or evolves, having a tool that helps you more effectively communicate who you are and how that’s expressed to the world becomes essential. I work with you to assemble the pieces you already have, identify and scrap outdated elements that need updating, and fill in any holes that become apparent. You’re left with a clear, coherent, compelling, and, importantly, useable treasure trove of “you-ness” that empowers leaders, employees, and partners to advance your mission confidently.

  • Sometimes you just need a little help. From website redesigns to customer communications, get help expressing your ideas, stories, and offerings more powerfully.

About

Laurel began her career as a strategist at SYPartners. There she worked with senior-level executive teams to better define who they were, where they were going, and how they’d get there. Clients included Target, American Public Media, GE, and GSD&M. After moving to NYC, she moved into brand and creative strategy, freelancing at innovation and design studios including Pearlfisher and Clark|McDowall. Wanting to try her hand at building her own business, one that would blend identity-defining, visual design, experience design, and strategic planning but on a more personal level, Laurel founded Esla Events in San Francisco. After building it into one of the most respected boutique event planning and design companies in the Bay Area, she sold it in 2015. She then joined Facebook, where she built and led a new communication design team called Studio X.

In 2018, inspired by the writing and photography of National Geographic photographers John Eastcott and Yva Momatiuk, she left Facebook to begin work on a project she called “A Year in America.” Armed with her camera and a tape recorder, she traveled the U.S. solo with her dog, interviewing over 150 people from all walks of life, and documenting the entire adventure through photography. She is now putting together a book based on those conversations and unexpected adventures. The experience solidified her sense that photography, writing, meaning-making, and identity-expression were to be her life’s work, so she founded Laurel Anderson Creative.

Laurel grew up in the mountains of Colorado, studied at Stanford, and lives in San Francisco and Healdsburg, CA.