Play It Brave Podcast

Have you ever watched a movie and known who directed it before you saw their name? Or looked at a photograph and immediately recognized the artist behind it?

What makes some creative work impossible to look away from, while other work, no matter how beautiful, is instantly forgettable?

In this episode of Play It Brave, D'Arcy explores what filmmakers, photographers, and artists can teach us about developing a recognizable artistic vision.

From the two very different adaptations of Pride & Prejudice to her experience studying directing at NYU and teaching photographers at The English Edit, D'Arcy shares why the most compelling work often comes from noticing what everyone else overlooks.

But there's another side to this conversation.

What if the photographs that make your work different are the very ones you've been editing out?

So many photographers create extraordinary images, then remove them from their portfolios because they're afraid clients, wedding planners, or other photographers won't understand them.

In this episode, you'll discover how to strengthen your artistic eye, recognize the beliefs that might be limiting your creativity, and begin trusting the photographs that make your work uniquely yours.

• What Pride & Prejudice teaches us about artistic vision and storytelling.
• Why two photographers can photograph the exact same scene and create completely different images.
• How to develop your artistic eye through a simple creative photography exercise.
• Why intentionally taking an ugly photograph might help you make something extraordinary.
• How limiting beliefs influence what you're willing to create and share.
• The difference between curating your portfolio with intention and editing out of fear.
• A three-photo exercise to rediscover the work you've been overlooking.

Choose one ordinary subject—a chair, coffee cup, window, or doorway—and challenge yourself to photograph it ten different ways.

1. The Ugly One: Break your usual rules. Make something imperfect on purpose.
2. Symmetry: Look for balance, repeating shapes, and clean lines.
3. Mystery: Conceal part of your subject or experiment with shadows.
4. Tenderness: Find softness in the light, shapes, or composition.
5. Drama: Experiment with contrast, scale, and perspective.
6. Loneliness: Use negative space to create a feeling of isolation.
7. Texture: Move closer and explore surfaces and small details.
8. Memory: Photograph your subject as though it belongs to another time.
9. Movement: Find a way to suggest energy or motion.
10. Your Instinct: Forget every instruction and photograph it however you want.

When you're finished, look at your images side by side. Which one felt most natural? Which one surprised you? And which one feels most like you?

You don't necessarily need to photograph another hundred weddings to create a stronger portfolio. You may already have the images you need.

Join D'Arcy for a free, live Curation Party, where you'll learn three strategic portfolio edits to help you communicate your artistic vision, strengthen your perceived value, and attract the weddings you actually want.

[REGISTER FOR THE FREE CURATION PARTY]

What if you're not booking the weddings you want because you're showing the wrong photographs?

Not because your work isn't beautiful. Not because you need another styled shoot in France. And definitely not because you need to spend the next six weeks rebranding your entire business.

After reviewing hundreds of photographers' portfolios over the years—and recently completing 15 back-to-back reviews—I've noticed something fascinating: incredibly talented photographers are often showcasing work that doesn't reflect their artistic vision, their desired pricing, or the clients they actually want to attract.

In today's episode of Play It Brave, we're talking about the difference between having beautiful photographs and having a beautifully curated portfolio that positions you as the obvious choice.

We're getting into:

• The Dior window-display effect: What luxury brands understand about capturing attention that photographers often miss.
• Three portfolio traps: The sentimental edit, the everything edit, and the outdated edit—and how they may be affecting your inquiries.
• The nine-image experiment: What your first nine photographs are communicating about your artistic identity and your value.
• Why more photographs don't mean more bookings: How a clear visual point of view can make you more memorable and desirable.
• The hidden gems on your hard drive: Why you might already have the work you need to attract your next level of clients.

And I'm inviting you to something special!

I'm hosting a live portfolio curation experience called 3 Edits to Your Portfolio to Book the Clients You Actually Want.

I'll take you inside my creative process and show you how I evaluate photographs, recognize an artist's visual signature, and choose images that communicate value.

We'll look at real portfolio examples, talk about the nine images that make a powerful first impression, and explore how to position your work for the weddings you want to photograph next.

Bring your portfolio, a notebook, and your coffee. We're going to have some fun.

Because your portfolio isn't just a collection of your best photographs.

It's an introduction to the photographer you want to become.

And engagement season is coming.

Let's make sure your portfolio is ready.

Facebook ads have made me millions, and they've also cost me sixty thousand dollars in a single agency contract. After a year and a half of mostly not running them, I'm turning my ads back on, so I sat down with Claire Pelletreau, creator of Absolute FB Ads and the teacher my team learned from, to ask everything I wanted to know before spending my own money again. We talk about her one simple ad, why complicated targeting has given way to ads that do the targeting themselves, why cheap leads are so often the wrong leads, how long to leave an ad alone, and how a luxury wedding photographer with no course and no webinar could use ads to find $10,000 clients. Claire also shares what happened the year she turned her own ads off, and why paying for marketing was never cheating.

Christina McGarvey grew up in a dilapidated Victorian farmhouse in Petersboro, Utah, watching her mother hang wallpaper, lay floors, and carve her own four-poster bed on a lathe. Decades later she built her own dream home, lost her sister, her mother, her father and her uncle in a single year, and somewhere inside that grief started selling the things she loved on Instagram. Today Millcreek Manor fills a 7,000-square-foot warehouse with antiques shipped by the container from England and Scotland, and a 440-piece container sold out in one weekend. We talk about whether good taste can be learned, how she decides what to buy when she's making hundreds of decisions in a week, what she does with the fear when the bank account gets small, and why the only way into a business you were never trained for is to begin. Plus: Millcreek Manor's holiday market, a little piece of a European Christmas market right here in Salt Lake, on November 20–21. The shop is open every Friday and Saturday until 4 pm, and they ship nationwide.

For years, I recognized Pamela Anderson without knowing much about the woman behind the image. Seeing her differently made me question what I'd overlooked—and how often people do the same with us.

In this solo episode, I explore what happens when your brand keeps introducing an earlier version of you. I share my own evolution from photography into coaching and writing, a lesson from helping rebrand a client, and three questions to help you see whether your brand reflects the work you want to do now.

You can be extraordinary at what you do and still have a brand that makes strangers scroll right past you. In this episode, D'Arcy sits down with brand strategist and researcher Dr. Chelsea Shields to show you what a brand actually does, and it's a lot more than a logo, a palette, or a pretty website.

They walk through real before-and-afters: a beauty brand that renamed itself so it could grow, a billion-dollar health company that traded its muscle-man logo for a story nobody can argue with, and the leadership brand D'Arcy and Chelsea rebuilt together, down to the one word on the homepage her clients would never have used about themselves.

Because sometimes your talent isn't the problem. Your brand just isn't saying it yet.

This one is visual. Watch the before-and-afters on YouTube: [YOUTUBE LINK]

If your brand feels beige, the question may go deeper than fonts, photographs, or a new website. What happens when being unmistakably yourself still feels unsafe?

After visiting Glastonbury, D'Arcy explores the fear of being seen through the archetype of the "dangerous woman," the patterns women may carry through family and culture, and the ways we edit our gifts to remain acceptable. She offers a different understanding of safety: trusting yourself to meet criticism, misunderstanding, or rejection without abandoning who you are.

For the artists, healers, intuitives, and women building businesses, this is an invitation to become visible one honest act at a time—and to imagine what we could create with the energy we once spent hiding.

There are more tools than ever to create a beautiful brand — so why are so many businesses starting to look exactly the same?

In this episode, D'Arcy sits down with anthropologist and consumer researcher Dr. Chelsea Shields to unpack three mistakes they see even incredibly talented businesses making: playing it too safe, building from inside their own perspective instead of understanding the buyer, and creating a brand that may be beautiful but isn't distinctive enough to be remembered.

They talk about why your greatest differentiator may be the thing you can't see in yourself, what the people who almost bought can teach you, why bold doesn't have to mean controversial, and how generic visuals can make extraordinary work feel surprisingly ordinary.

They also explore what happens when you've outgrown the identity your audience originally followed you for — and why evolving your brand doesn't mean abandoning everything you've built. Ultimately, D'Arcy makes the case for something bigger than creating a prettier brand:

Don't just build a brand. Build a world.

Because content can fill a feed. A great brand should make someone feel something — and give the right person a world she wants to step into.

Connect with Dr. Chelsea Shields: [CHELSEA WEBSITE]

Connect with D'Arcy: [D'ARCY WEBSITE] [D'ARCY INSTAGRAM]

Clarity-Call Link

What if one job didn't have to equal one payday? Most of us finish the work, get paid, deliver what we promised — and immediately start hunting for the next client. But there may be far more money sitting inside work you've already created. In this short episode, D'Arcy shares a simple way to look at every finished job through three lenses: NOW — the money it makes today. AGAIN — how the same work can be sold, packaged or used again. POSSIBLE — the referrals, reputation, relationships and future opportunities it can create. You'll hear what this looks like for photographers, coaches, writers and other creative entrepreneurs — and how to stop turning every good idea into more work by asking one simple question: What is the easiest next move? Because the goal isn't to work more. It's to make the work you've already done work harder for you.