Corporate headshot photographer – 10 things to consider
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Check the size of the room where the headshot photography is to take place
Hold the shoot in a large room if possible and without bulky furniture. This provides sufficient space for the headshot photographer to set up lights and backdrop ready for the subjects to be photographed. Most London offices will have rooms that provide sufficient space for effective corporate headshots.
If possible, email a few photographs of the room to the photographer in advance of the corporate photo shoot so that the photographer can assess the décor, natural lighting, windows and furniture. Ideally, consider making time for the photographer to recce the venue ahead of the photo shoot. This will save time on the day deciding on best angles, siting of lighting equipment and backdrops.
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Decide on the backdrop colour for the headshots
If the photographs are going to be used against a plain colour in the future, then it is important to think about whether this will be white, grey or black. The headshot photographer will bring the correct coloured backdrop with them to the photo shoot. If a designer is working with the company on the website design they may have a view on the colour of the backdrop.
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Corporate headshot photography for international companies
Once the backdrop colour has been selected and approved, then the colour and lighting can be discussed with other photographers commissioned to take headshots of directors and staff in sister offices across the world. For international corporations, this ensures all headshot photographs have a standard, branded look and feel, making them ideal for the company’s website, marketing literature and other promotional materials.
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Scheduling the photography on the day
The amount of time required for the photo shoot will depend on the number of people to be photographed on the day and their schedules. Time should be allowed when the headshot photographer arrives for them to set up all the equipment and take test shots. Allow 10 minutes per person for the headshots to be taken.
An agreed schedule circulated to all the people having their corporate headshots taken and to the photographer in advance will aid the smooth running of the day and maximise time efficiency.
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A makeup artist on the day
Would a makeup artist be useful on the day? A makeup artist with the correct PPE can help straighten hair, clothing and ties as well as makeup as requested. Piranha Photography can arrange a suitable makeup artist for a corporate photo shoot if required.
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How many corporate headshot photographs are required of each person?
Some companies like a selection of many photographs of each person from which they can choose after the photoshoot. Other businesses ask for the people being photographed to choose one photograph each.
Piranha will set up a laptop so that the corporate headshots can be viewed immediately and selected. This can help the marketing department as they won’t need to seek approval after the photo shoot from each person photographed at a later date.
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Website from corporate headshot photographer for selecting
Piranha provides and hosts a website of the photography from the day. We do this to save clients’ time, allowing images to be selected quickly, then circulated to designers, marketing department as well as colleagues photographed for their approval.
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What are the best formats for the final photographs?
All Piranha Photography’s corporate headshots are taken on top of the range cameras as RAW files. After the photo shoot has been completed these files are hand processed through specialist photographic software so that colour, contrast and other details can be fine-tuned, and blemishes removed before supplying clients with jpeg files of the correct size for their project.
The final images can be supplied as either colour or black and white depending on the design.
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Photoshop ‘cutting out’ corporate headshots to replace backgrounds
For quite a few companies the corporate headshots taken against a simple backdrop provide the basis of their final images. The selected headshots are ‘cut out’ by Piranha in Photoshop and then placed on pre-approved backgrounds which have been previously photographed around the offices. This method means that the staff can appear to be in their usual workplace settings even though the day of the photoshoot it was not possible.
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Resizing of final photographic files by corporate headshot photographer
Corporate headshots are required for many purposes. For example, they may be used for a company’s webpage but also on the individuals’ LinkedIn or Twitter accounts and on pitch documents.
Once Piranha is supplied with the dimensions for any media we ensure that the pictures are cropped and resized that are ready to upload or print. For PR we can supply directly to newspapers high resolution jpeg files suitable for printing from. The same applies to Dropbox links for designers and/or the press to download from.
