Portrait Photography Archives

The Advantages of Corporate Photography Post Production Techniques.

27th March 2018/in business headshots, Corporate Headshots, Corporate Office Headshots, Corporate Photographer London, LinkedIn Headshots, Portrait Photography /by Editor

Post production techniques can benefit the marketing impact of your commissioned corporate photography.

Our headshot photographers undertake hundreds of commissions each year and as I get more involved in the post production side of the industry I can see how clients do not see the potential of what is on offer.

To give some examples. The first case is a company will approach us and we will agree to capture their staff and directors headshots. Within our quote we include airbrushing and retouching to selected images. After we do the shoot we send all the high res versions and the client is happy. A week later the headshots are on their website and the next time we will hear from them is when they have new starters to be photographed.

The second case is several other companies we work with and we go through the same process but after the shoot them come back with a list of images they require being retouched and asking if we can do anything to improve the overall impression of the headshots. The answer is always yes.

We are beginning to see that what the photographer can capture in camera is only half of the process. Post production gives a whole new dimension of what can be added to the original corporate headshot.

Traditionally business headshots were on a white or sometimes blue background. This was due to these being the most popular background paper rolls that were sold by Colourama. This trends continues to this day and there is no reason for this. Good quality cut outs in post production means that you can literally have any background you require. As it is now impossible to tell that a headshot has been cut out and placed on a new background this opens up great possibilities. We work with large international companies who want all their worldwide offices to have headshots with the same background. We have guidelines for foreign photographers and we then create a corporate branding in post production. Another client again with international offices was having real problems trying to capture headshots of staff in their offices across the world. Again we wrote guides for the photographers and then purchased library shots of the world capitals and very carefully created a set of professional headshots for them.

Another option to look at is that if you have a headshot you are pleased with and feel confident using then get more from it by adding backgrounds, cropping and tailoring it to work in different situations. These are some samples we put together to help clients understand what is possible in post production.

These two samples have been captured in clients offices and we have subtly retouched them. The worst thing with post production is the ease with which the client or the photographer can over work the headshot. Retouching should never be noticeable on the final version. You would be able to see differences if you compared the original headshot with the retouched version but the final product should and must look natural. Our subtle retouching and airbrushing includes lessening lines and wrinkles normally around the eye area. We also remove any spots or blemishes as these are not permanent features. Scars and moles are a person’s preference wether we remove them or not. Shinny skin can be reduced and any discolouration reduced to look healthy.

At this stage we have now added an office environment background with gives the headshot a new dimension. It makes perfect sense to me that a corporate headshot should have a corporate background. Gives the person a sense of where they work. It is instant that the viewer knows this is a person at work and it is a business profile photograph. I have been creating LinkedIn headshots in London for many years now and I am still amazed at some of the profile photos I see. Snaps of company directors half up a mountain or on a sailing boat. The person is usually so small in the picture they are barely recognisable. If you get past this amateur mistake you then see they have spent a great deal of time writing content for their profile but the first thing you look at as a potential employer or client is the photo and you really need to look professional at that point.

The benefits of adding a background in post production really come into play at this point. You can have your headshot captured in a studio utilising the professional lighting which would be a difficult option if you wanted to do it on location. After this you can add a background that perfectly reflects your business sector.

Being based in London with most of our clients they require a City background added as this reflects their work location. I mentioned earlier about the benefits for international companies but another point to look at is that it is very easy for us to apply the London cityscape as a background but if you try and recreate this on a shoot you will have to gain access to a high building as trying to capture this type of headshot at street level is not possible due to the height of the building which create a steep angle. We have a library taken from many of the skyscrapers in the City purely for the purpose of being added as a background.These are carefully shot to allow for the person standing and blocking most of the view and gently put out of focus to replicate the shot if it was captured in camera and the use of a long portrait lens and the point of focus.

Corporate branding colours can be sample from your old headshots or created and added to your companies headshots. These are also made web friendly and feathered in around hairstyles. It might be suggested that this can be done with a colour background roll and save the post production work but that is a mistake. In the past we had clients buying background rolls and sending them all over the world for different photographers to use. This was in the hope that the background and therefore the headshots would remain consistent. The main recurring problem with this is lighting varies and therefore the hue, colour and brightness of the background changed in different photographers work.

If you want the background and the your headshots to perfectly consistent the only sure way to guarantee this is to add them in post production.

You might be interested in our last post on corporate photography tips.

Please get in touch if you have any questions or additional benefits to corporate photography using post production techniques.

CEO & Director Headshots & Portrait Package London.

22nd March 2018/in black and white photography, Business Magazine Photography, Corporate Photographer London, Portrait Photography /by Editor

These are a selection of portraits originally commissioned by The CEO Magazine a couple of years ago. They required a good variety of images to feature in a large article. We spent a couple of hours at the London offices capturing some interesting imagery.

Corporate headshot and portrait of CEO in London offices.

After the shoot we published the images on our blog and via our social media sites and found the style a variation to be of interest to our clients.We now offer a package where we can visit your offices and capture a specialist headshot and portrait portfolio. These give you a photo library to draw on for press release, LinkedIn, pitch documents, business social media, company website profiles, event presentations, gravatar and any marketing material.

This package is designed for business people who have a requirement to look professional and contemporary in their corporate public profile. These portraits allow you to control your images in the media and issue and send the correct headshot for the appropriate situation.

Depending on how many final portraits you require we can spend between 1 and 2 hours on site. Within this time we will have a quick recce of the offices and decide on several of the best location to capture the photos. We suggest a variety of backgrounds to give a range to the portraits and we can use the offices as environmental backgrounds and bring a plain white and black background as well. Our photographer will give guidance on posture and posing and suggest when to smile and capture a very wide variety so you have plenty to choose from. We can edit the selection for you or send you all the images captured within the session. Also as we shoot the portraits we can show you the results on the back of the digital camera so you will have a feel for what is being taken and it will give you confidence in front of the camera. Sometimes the client has a shoot list and a requirement for images to fit a design or document so we can tailor the shoot to accommodate these. Also we often work to a corporate branding guidelines including company colour and logo etc.

After the commission we will process the portraits and edit out any obvious flaws. All the images will be uploaded to our secure server and then we send a download link that can be password protected if required. We send out low res images for quick and easy viewing and also high res versions approx 3mb jpgs. If you require RAW files we will need to know this prior to the shoot. Delivery of image download link is within 48 hours.

Within the package we offer free retouching and airbrushing to your favourite portraits. Select a couple from each setting and location we shot and send us a list with the original jpg file numbers. With portrait retouching we do it in a subtle way making sure it is not obvious that anything has been retouched. We decrease wrinkles and clear up any spots or stained teeth. Ties can be straightened and clothes can have dust and fly away hairs cleaned up. Pretty much anything is possible with photoshop. Depending on the amount of post production work on at the time we normally take around 48 hours to return your retouched headshots and portraits to you.

If you would like to know more about our Director and CEO corporate headshot & portrait package please drop us a line. Corporate Photography Agency

Proud Gallery London

13th March 2018/in London Photography, Photography News, Portrait Photography /by Editor

As Proud Camden shuts up shop, Dan Carrier talks to gallery owner Alex Proud about how he made photography hip.

Proud Gallery London

The gallery was on The Strand and focused on Japanese prints. But due to its specialised nature and stormy economic conditions, art lovers were not exactly beating down the door.

It was the early 1990s. Proprietor Alex Proud had recently left university and was doing an apprenticeship with an art dealer. As he waited for visitors to pop in, a random conversation was to change his business – and the world of London photography – for ever.

“I opened Proud Central in 1994,” he recalls. “It had been a stamp shop. I got it for about half a penny from British Rail – it was during the recession. But it was a disaster. London was at a standstill.

“My colleague Isabelle was the wife of the photographer Dennis Morris, who had shot the Sex Pistols and Bob Marley. She said to me: why not do photography shows?”

It was, Alex says, a “eureka” moment.

“We featured images of the Sex Pistols, and in one week I got more press coverage then I had had in a lifetime,” he says. “It dawned on me that I had found something no one else was doing and this concept of rock and roll photography opened up.”

Alex went on to establish galleries across London, including Proud Camden. First found in a warehouse in Greenland Road, it moved 17 years ago to the Horse Hospital in the Stables Market and became both a gallery, restaurant and club.

Earlier this month, it was announced Proud Camden was closing – despite Alex offering owners Lab Tech a reported £1m a year in rent. But while Alex is now known by many as a nightclub impresario, he is first and foremost an art curator and gallery owner whose work in the 1990s reinvigorated the idea of photography as an arts medium by drawing on popular culture for its subject matter.

“There were 100 great photographers from the 1950s onwards that no one remembered existed,” he says.

The likes of Duffy, who shot David Bowie, and Terry O’Neill, whose portraits include many of Hollywood greats, were seriously under-represented when it came to shows. This niche in the market opened up for Alex.

“There were these incredible photographers and none of them were having exhibitions,” he recalls.

“With Morris, 5,000 people came to see us in one month – I’d had about 500 in two years before then.”

He met Mick Rock – known as “the man who shot the Seventies”, with a back catalogue that ranged from Blondie to Iggy Pop and The Rocky Horror Show through to Queen – and realised his work was ripe for a revival. “No one was talking to him. He was a relic from the 1970s, forgotten – so I met him in a pub and he told me incredible stories,” he adds. “He was a legend who nobody knew.”

It changed the landscape of pop photography – and vitally big firms had high sponsorship budgets and wanted to be associated with them.

“They wanted to spend on cultural events, so that opened the door to do original exhibitions,” he remembers. “You could sell these ideas to firms like Orange, Jaguar. It meant you could do fun, exciting exhibitions.”

But he says the changing nature of how content is bought and sold has wrecked the market for the creative industries.

“That pipeline stopped because greedy corporations take ownership of the photographers’ copyright. Photographers cannot make a living any more,” he says. “It was unique and will never happen again.”

And Alex’s idea of sourcing photographers from the world of rock and roll has been grasped by big institutions.

“You now have Bowie at the V&A. People used to be snobs about it before we showed it worked,” he says.

Alex grew up in Brighton. His father was a stamp collector, historian and author of more than 60 books.

“I collected Penny Reds as a kid,” says Alex. “I grew up in a political household. We had the Encyclopedia Britannica on our kitchen table and we’d spend hours discussing the world. We were brought up to be liberals – and to question everything.”

Passionate about politics, he studied the subject at York and in 1990s worked for Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy.

Proud Camden, he says, tapped in to the area’s rock and roll culture.

“I realised there was a Generation X who understood and appreciated the multi-faceted idea of what culture means – that it isn’t just opera or classical music or figurative or abstract art,” he says.

“We gave them something they recognised, a culture they owned, and it resonated enormously with them.”

But photography today worries him. “The money to pay picture editors and photographers has completely disappeared,” he says. “Magazines and newspapers are not doing well and you simply cannot make a living selling pictures.”

He claims social media firms who are not considered publishers or pay for content are one of the causes for this decimation of photographers’ income. “It is so popular, but a lack of protection over image rights means the great artistic photographers are struggling,” he says. “It is doing badly for the same reasons as other arts are – everyone thinks it should all be free.

“It means there will be fewer artists. It is the same with live music. We are destroying the eco-systems that create it.”

Article from http://camdennewjournal.com

You might be interested in Photographs of Women in the Punk and Indie Music Scene

Benefits of Professional Executive Headshots

26th January 2018/in Corporate Headshots, Corporate Office Headshots, LinkedIn Headshots, Photography News, Portrait Photography /by Editor

Great article by New York corporate photographer Michael Benabib

Working with executive headshots.

LinkedIn is the most lucrative social platform for corporate business and client acquisition. Your LinkedIn profile pic is the first impression to inspire engagement from your target market. Therefore, it’s imperative your corporate headshots and LinkedIn profile pic best represents your business and experience level.

The best example for the perfect LinkedIn profile pic is the corporate headshot of LinkedIn VP of Marketing Solutions, Penry Price. As the photographer working with LinkedIn executives, I’d like to share the elements for a perfect corporate headshot. Here are 7 tips to achieve a high-ranking profile pic:

1. Hire a Professional.

Don’t squander your executive headshot image potential with a candid profile photo. Professionalism and individual value is perceived by the investment you are willing to invest in yourself; if you wouldn’t, why should anyone else? If you want to be perceived as an consummate professional, hire a professional.

2. Arrive with an open mind.

Willingness to experiment is critical to any creative endeavor and yields optimal results. Therefore, be open to stepping outside your comfort zone. There’s a method to the madness for any seasoned headshot photographer to achieve the best results. Remember, it’s always in your best interest for the photographer to make you look outstanding. If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.

3. Look straight into the camera.

A successful business profile photo communicates with the viewer. Connect with the camera to make a positive first impression. Don’t think about your facial expression, have fun.

4. Dress for success.

It’s best to let your personal style shine through. However, If wardrobe selection becomes a daunting task, browse corporate headshots of prominent pros in your field for inspiration. Either way… keep it clean, pressed, and wrinkle-free.

5. Company culture matters.

Similar to the LinkedIn profile photo we featured, shoot in a location that tells your story. Your executive headshots environment will provide a sense of company culture in its best light. However, a studio photoshoot session can be customized to put you in your best light.

6. Have fun.

I enjoy getting to meet and work with different people. Our shoot is 50% photography and 50% getting to know each other. The camera captures the moment – we create an atmosphere that exudes confidence and comfort. Don’t stress the small stuff, Photoshop is everyone’s friend.

7. Try different poses.

Commonly, corporate clients are surprised to discover their best angle was counter-intuitive and contrary to how they usually pose for the camera. Your photographer will guide you through different ways to position yourself for the camera. Also, review your photos during your photoshoot so you can see the variations, then go shoot more.

For samples of our London corporate photographers work.