A recent full-day photoshoot at a client’s premises produced a great series of headshots, in large part thanks to excellent support from the organiser. I thought it might be helpful to others tasked with arranging similar shoots to run through some of the key good practices.

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Preparation for the shoot

Don’t leave it till the last moment to select and brief a photographer. You need time to be sure you’ve found the right one, and he or she needs time to understand your goals and requirements in detail, in order to plan and prepare the shoot.

In this case, my client contacted me a full two weeks in advance. We discussed availability and price, of course. But more importantly we clarified the key points that would enable her to plan the day with team members, and allow me to make decisions about my equipment and approach:

• Timing – How much time would we need for each person? The 21 subjects were senior staff with busy agendas, so we had to allow for some flexibility, and I wanted to be sure that I’d have enough time to actually meet each person before I started photographing them. We agreed to allow a 20-minute slot per subject, and this turned out to be comfortable.

• Style and mood – We settled on ‘professional, but open and approachable’ as the best summary of the image we wanted the headshots to project.

• Framing – We agreed that I should aim to deliver four head and shoulders portraits per person, and where possible a couple of half-body ones as well, all shot in portrait (vertical) orientation.

• Background – The client asked for a plain black background.

• Location – They booked a large conference room for the day of the shoot. We arranged a video call a few days before, and I was grateful to my client for showing me the room. It was certainly large enough, but they would need to move some furniture to create an open space of about four metres by four metres.

Set-up and test shoot

Remember to allow up to half an hour for the photographer to set up. I brought a single studio light with an umbrella reflector, a standalone fill-shadow reflector, and a large cloth backdrop with stands and rail.

It took me about twenty minutes to get everything set up and positioned, but I still wasn’t ready for the first subject. First, I invited the organiser herself to pose for a short series of test shots. This is a crucial step. It allowed me to fine tune the settings, position and angle of my strobe light, and to review the tests shots with the client herself to be sure that the framings would give her the images she needed.

Relaxing the subjects

The organiser had briefed each subject to know more or less what to expect. This, combined with the relatively relaxed schedule, which gave me time to start up a conversation with each person before I began to shoot them, meant that they were all pretty comfortable in front of the camera – or, for the couple who obviously found the whole thing a bit stressful, at least more comfortable than they would otherwise have been. No one wept or ran away, and a number clearly enjoyed posing. I was impressed by how many expressed real gratitude to the organiser for arranging the shoot.