The board members of Elegant Hotels needed updated portrait photographs, for their company annual report –

Over half of the main boards (56 boards) of the UK’s leading 100 quoted companies have no directors that appear to be from Black or Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.

Press coverage discussing Piranha Photography’s research findings –

Piranha photographed the Kingfisher board members in the company’s London offices to generate a full-length image of the team together.  The photograph appeared in this year’s annual report and accounts.

The below photography of Galliford Try’s board members appeared in their annual report and also on the website. The images were taken prior to a board meeting at the companies offices –

Persona Grata with Leica

Of late, a strange thing has been happening when shooting CEOs and other board directors at corporate photo-shoots. I have suddenly become a person of interest.

I’ve been working for well over 20 years as a professional photographer. Normally on a CEO shoot, the best I can expect is a quick handshake, the briefest of enquiries about my train journey, and then a reluctant five minutes in front of my camera while I get on with the job. Most CEOs would much rather be running their businesses than standing in front of my camera. Or so it seemed.

What’s changed? This Christmas I bought a Leica M10 to add to my Leica SL and Leica M240 cameras. This new camera is of such iconic status it’s changed the whole tone of virtually every big shoot I’ve done since.

Such is the Leica M10’s mystique, it’s like opening your wallet and flourishing a black Amex card. The camera is so well put together, so perfectly engineered, so – forgive me – beautiful in its form and function, that CEOs can’t resist asking me what’s it like to use. I have become persona grata with the senior executive.

Believe this, I am now routinely spending an extra half hour at every directors’ shoot to talk with them afterwards about the Leica M10. And like every professional who loves the tools of their craft and sharing their passion, this is time well spent.

What I love about the M10 is that it’s been stripped back to the essentials. It’s a classic case of less is more. While the camera itself has been stripped of fripperies, it generously gives back far more in terms of the depth of its images and colour accuracy.

Personally, I love the manual lens focus. By not using auto, the camera forces me to slow down, think more, notice more, plan better and not waste shots. Rapid multiple shots have given way to single clicks of the shutter, and the results are all the better for it. It’s as if I’ve gone back to using real film where every frame counts.

I’ve used Canons and Nikons for years and they’re all fine cameras. But the Leica is in a league of its own, the professional photographer’s choice, bar none, and – who’d have known? – it appears also to be the camera that would be the CEO’s first choice.

We look forward to hearing from you,

Douglas

The head office in London of this company required that the board members to be photographed together as a group  for their annual report 2016/17 as well as individually.  The final photographs were used as portrait shots to accompany the individual reviews and sections of the report and group shots for the relevant pages.  The final published report pages featuring the photographs can be seen below –

Recommendation on LinkedIn –

The AIG Europe Board members were photographed by Piranha for the 2015 annual report –

The below photographs of the board members were taken by Piranha, the company wanted the board members to appear in group’s.  These images were featured in the 2015 Annual Report –

A day of photography in Jersey to photograph the board of Directors for Highland Gold Mining.  These images are for use on their website and in their annual report –