corporate photography

Portrait of a company

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For individual portrait sittings, I insist on sessions of at least one hour, whether in the studio or elsewhere. This gives the subject time to get to know me a little, and allows us to work with two or three different lighting set-ups and changes of clothes. Photographing a team of fifty people or more in a single day presents a different challenge, because I have to find a way to put each person at ease extremely quickly. But it’s something I’m asked to do more and more often, and it’s a lot of fun.

I recently had the opportunity to photograph the whole staff team of Jean Wauters Aciers Spéciaux in the company’s enormous steel distribution centre in Molenbeek.

I’d been asked to make two separate portraits of each person – classic ‘headshots’ and full-length portraits that showed the company’s busy working environment in the background. Careful planning was needed to do this efficiently. To minimise the demands on people’s time, I decided to work with my two set-ups in parallel. I made a pre-shoot site visit and identified two locations close to one another, where I would not get in the way of the fork-lift trucks that whizz around the warehouse. I would have approximately ten minutes to make the two portraits of each person.

The first set-up gave me an unobstructed 270° view which enabled me to place my subjects at different orintations to the camera and my single light, so that I could get a variety of views behind them. For the second, I used a portable plain white backdrop, two lights and a reflector, all of which were hidden from the first set-up.

On their side, my client had done a great job in scheduling the subjects in groups of two or three, so we could make their environmental portraits and then move across to the other set-up to make their headshots. This saved additional time, so that I was able to finish the job ahead of schedule. The friendliness and good-natured cooperation of the entire team meant that everything ran smoothly and made a busy day a real pleasure for me.

'Our Team' portraits – the main things to think about

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I’m currently getting a lot of requests for corporate headshot photo sessions. Here, I explain the key choices you’ll need to make when you decide to renew the photographs of your team members.

With everyone back in the office (at least some of the time) after two years of Covid disruption, companies are realising that their teams have changed a lot. There are many new faces, some of the old ones have new hairstyles, and the ‘Our Team’ page on the website is in serious need of updating. For many, this provides an opportunity to achieve a degree of consistency among the portraits. A variety of styles and backgrounds is not a good way to demonstrate the team’s coordination and clarity of mission. In such cases, it may be best to organise a shoot for all team members.

How will the headshots be used?

The first thing to consider is the range of applications for which you need team portraits. There’s the corporate website, of course. But you may also need portrait photos for LinkedIn, press articles, speaker’s bios, presentations, email signatures, profile pictures for video-conferencing, among other uses. If you are commissioning one set of headshots, it is probably worth asking the photographer to shoot a second and even a third set during the same session, each adapted to a different purpose.

Framing

Framing refers to the way that the subject fits within the borders of the portrait, and it ranges from a close-up of the face to a full-body (sitting or standing) portrait. Head and shoulders, bust, and half-body are the three most common choices. You may want to ask the photographer for two or more different framings of each person.

Background

Next, what kind of background or backgrounds should the portraits have? Many organisations choose a neutral background. Typically, these are either brilliant white, off-white, grey or black, but a muted colour (perhaps picking up on a key colour of the corporate graphic charter) can also work well. Others go for an ‘environmental’ style which places the subject in a professional setting. The set above was shot in a conference room, with a range of light, blurred out backgrounds that provide some atmospheric context without distracting from the subjects.

Aspect ratio

Do you want to present the portraits in a square frame, in the classical ‘portrait’ (vertical, either 2:3 or 3:4) orientation, or in the more cinematic ‘landscape’ (horizontal) format, like this set?

Colour treatment

Most organisations opt for a natural colour treatment, while others prefer monochrome, either black and white or tinted (sepia, for example). The young start-up that commissioned this set wanted the portraits to reflect the company’s dynamic, energetic personality, and went for a contemporary, high-contrast, high-saturation colour treatment.

Dress code

Think carefully about the guidance that you will give your team about what they should wear for the photoshoot. Some companies impose quite strict rules, while others make a virtue of diversity. Once again, the aim should be to reflect the personality of the organisation, placing it somewhere on the formal-to-informal spectrum. Of course, most will wish to appear both professional and approachable, but a dress code can provide a strong signal to potential clients and partners about the kind of relationship that the company offers.

Discuss with the photographer

Finally, don’t hesitate to draw on your photographer’s experience to help you shape your decisions on these points. Talk them through, and seek the photographer’s advice. Ask for their opinion about your existing team portraits, and for their suggestions about how to get the most out of the planned photo session. If you do this well in advance, so that the key decisions have been made at latest a few days before the shoot, the photographer will come fully prepared, with all the right equipment, and will be able to deliver the best possible value for money.

Behind the scenes at a startup company

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Neuroventis is a young Belgian startup company operating in the rapidly expanding field of device-based healthcare support. Their first two product suites gather data from migraine and epilepsy sufferers and feed it securely to their doctors, making possible earlier and more tailored interventions. I was lucky enough to be asked to make portraits of the company’s team of 14 staff on the occasion of its fifth birthday. While I was there I also shot a series of informal ‘behind the scenes’ images for the website.

I absolutely love doing this kind of photographic reportage. A couple of times I did suggest something to a member of the Neuroventis team, or ask someone to hold a position for me for a couple of minutes. But mostly I just drifted around the company’s brick-lined office space snapping what was actually going on that afternoon.

They were very welcoming and cooperated eagerly in the entire process. I left them sharing a few beers at the end of the day to celebrate the company’s first five years of existence. I can’t wait to see how they use my photos on their website.