Corporate Photographer London Archives

Company Website Headshots

A very large percentage of our commissions are for company website headshots. These are normally requested if the client is doing a new or refreshing their business website. The ‘About Us’ or ‘Meet the team’ page is as important as any others on their site so it is critical to keep the headshots looking professional and consistent. Even now I am asked to look at a new corporate website and see that the profile photos are taken on a phone and have no consistency at all. This does surprise us as the business owner has spent time and money in other areas of the site but just deemed the profile photos as not important. As we are still in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis it is even harder to maintain a good range of staff headshots on the company website. But we do have a few suggestions to help clients as they are currently unable to commission a corporate headshot photographer.

Our first tip is to make sure that a new employee when taking a new headshot gets a friend to take it and not take their headshot in a mirror. Position themselves in an area of soft light away from direct sunlight and any harsh overhead lighting. Capture the portrait from the waist up so that anyone working on the headshot in post-production has enough room to crop and match the current team photos. Secondly, make sure you are using the highest quality resolution your phone or camera will allow. We receive some amateur portraits that are so pixelated that we can not improve them. Lastly, think about the background. The best solution is to take your headshot against a plain light wall. This allows you to avoid any distracting shapes or colours behind the subject. This is the advice we give to our clients and we then have plenty to work with if they want us to clean and tidy them up in photoshop. We often add backgrounds to make the company website headshots consistent or we add location backgrounds for international clients.

Company website headshots with consistent backgrounds

Reviewing Past Corporate Headshot Commissions.

12th January 2021/in Corporate Headshots, Corporate Photographer London, corporate portrait photography /by Editor

Before Covid-19 took its terrible hold on the UK, we would write articles about recent corporate headshot commissions. These usually followed if we had a very successful or rewarding shoot and had interesting points for the reader. As we move into another lockdown and no sign of our work coming back soon, we are looking at past corporate headshot commissions. The one we are looking back on is a shoot we did for Harrods. We were asked to capture their management team’s corporate headshots at their offices in the Harrods building in Knightsbridge. Their marketing director arranged a large office for us to do the shoot in and plenty of coffee to keep us going. We had agreed to do the headshots on a dark background which is not usually used for corporate headshots as 90%are taken against a white background. Sometimes the dark background can look a little overpowering and not as clean and crisp and a white one.

Prior to the commission, we always send over some wardrobe guidelines to give people some ideas and suggestions regarding what works and what does not. The Harrods team were very professional and very well presented, and we knew directly that placing them in front of the dark grey background would be a great match. When it came to the lighting, we decided to keep the lights soft and direct to avoid any harsh shadows. We photographed ten people on this commission, and with plenty of different poses and expressions, we were sure the client would be happy.

The feedback was very positive when we sent over the preview images. A couple of headshots were selected for retouching and airbrushing, and we really pleased with the results. The two samples below show how the monotone clothing and the dark grey background lift the person’s skin colour and give a striking corporate headshot. The ironic thing was that the client later asked us to convert the colour images into black and white as they had changed the website design.

Professional corporate headshot on dark background.

The Potential of Corporate Photography

4th December 2018/in Corporate Office Photography, corporate photographer in London, Corporate Photographer London /by Editor

In our day to day process of working with current and new corporate clients in London we often have to look at their websites to replicate a current headshot style or check formats for new portraits. On many occasions we notice how websites are not seeing the potential corporate photography could bring to their online marketing. There are lots of London financial and legal homepages with a City skyline which although there are some great images, this does not tell you anything about the company other than they are in London and their offices might feature somewhere in the cityscape. In our opinion the homepage of your website is your shopfront and you should lay out all your positives here. Granted this means coming up with ideas and lengthens the process but potential for following a more creative process would surely bring bigger benefits.

We get commissioned to help our clients with their corporate headshots and will mostly visit their offices to do the images. The potential for us to capture other imagery whilst their is often missed as the headshots are priority for the new website. In some instances clients will ask us to capture photos, they or their web designer has suggested.

the potential of good corporate website banner photography

corporate website banner photography potential

the potential of good corporate website banner photography

These corporate banner images work really well and show a good insight into the culture and workplace of the company.

One of the most interesting projects we worked on and is my favourite was our client who wanted to show how busy their offices were and asked us to produce a time lapse film showing different areas of their building. We set up cameras over a day period and captured the time lapse frames which we stitched together in post production. They then had their web designer install these on their website’s homepage on a loop and it looks professional and instantly shows the viewer the workings of the company. Corporate Video Homepage sample.

Corporate Photography Samples from London Offices

27th September 2018/in Corporate Office Headshots, corporate photographer in London, Corporate Photographer London, corporate portrait photography, Fly on the wall corporate photographer, interior photography, Reportage Corporate Photography /by Editor

reportage corporate photography in London offices

Following on from my last post on corporate London photography I would like to show some samples of our corporate photography taken in London offices.

This style of photography has always been one of our favourites to capture and to see on clients websites. Most of our commissions are for corporate headshots but we are seeing more clients asking us to also capture some ‘working’ images whilst we are there. In our opinion these give a true reflection of your company and its employees, capturing natural and unposed images of everyday office life. When we explain that to capture these reportage office shots we will just wander around the building and wait for interesting moments to happen, understandably clients are a little wary of what we will come back with. Our aim is to make the offices look as good as possible and using focus techniques with experience we can perfect these everyday scenes into good marketing material for your company.

These corporate reportage photographs look natural and therefore seeming easy to capture as the photographer just has to point his camera at what is going on in the offices. This is far from the truth and capturing these images takes lots of skill and experience. Photographers who are not used to shooting reportage can come unstuck very quickly as they are faced by a busy office full of people who normally do not want to be photographed. Blending into the background and thinking ahead of situations are skills you need and making sure you are in the correct position to capture a moment when it is about to happen. If the photographer is wandering around a London office and seeing a fleeting moment happen then they have missed the opportunity to capture it as they will not have time to get the camera in position let alone focus accurately.

Once in the bag these images are ideal for company websites and can be used as banner images and we are seeing them used as individual’s profile photographs along with and sometimes, instead of the more traditional corporate headshot.

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