If your company has a brand book, there's a fair chance it says something about photography. A background colour. A lighting style. And if you're the person organising the shoot, you've got a second job on top of getting everyone photographed: making sure they match the rest of the company.
That's a different job from a normal headshot session. It's also one I do a lot, so here's how it actually works.
What brand guidelines usually specify for headshots
Most guidelines that mention headshots cover two things. The background, often a precise colour with a hex or RGB value rather than "grey" or "white". And the lighting, the pattern of light and shadow on the face that gives every portrait the same feel.
Some go further, specifying how tightly the image is cropped or how much retouching is allowed. The point of all of it is consistency. A finance director in London should sit next to a colleague photographed in New York or Frankfurt and look like they belong on the same page.
The catch is that a brand's required lighting often isn't the lighting a photographer would choose. So the question for you, when you're hiring someone, is simple: can they put their own style aside and shoot to a spec? Not every photographer can or will. I do.
A recent example: SitusAMC at Canary Wharf
SitusAMC are a multinational, and they came to me with proper brand guidelines for their headshots. They needed their London team photographed at their office in Cargo, 25 North Colonnade, up on the 10th floor.
Two things were fixed. The background had to be a specific grey, supplied as an exact colour value. And the lighting had to follow a set pattern, so the London team would match colleagues already photographed by other photographers in other countries. That lighting wasn't the pattern I'd normally reach for. It didn't need to be. I replicate whatever pattern a brand requires, and that's the whole point of the session: the team has to match the company, not match me.
So I photographed everyone on a plain background using the brand's lighting pattern. That set is the consistent, on-spec version that drops straight into the global directory alongside everyone else.
"The team has to match the company, not match me. That's the whole point."
The bit I'm quietly proud of: the window option
SitusAMC also wanted an alternative. As well as the plain grey, they liked the idea of the view from the 10th-floor windows behind people, something with a bit of Canary Wharf in it.
There's a wrong way to do this. You shoot the headshots, then crudely paste in a window photo that was taken on different settings, and it looks pasted in. People can tell.
So I shot a few options of the view from the windows, matching the exact camera settings I'd used for the headshots themselves. Same focal length, same aperture, same exposure, same white balance. And, crucially, the same focus point, so the background blur falls exactly where it should. That's the detail that gives most composites away. Get the blur even slightly wrong and the eye knows something's off, even if it can't say why. Match it and the window view holds up. It reads as a real photograph rather than a cut-out on a backdrop.
The team ended up with both: the on-brand grey for anything that needs to match the global standard, and the window view for the times a London office wants to look like a London office. And I didn't give them just one window shot. I supplied a few different versions, with the light sitting differently and slight colour shifts in the skyscrapers opposite, so they could pick the one that suited each person and each use.
How the images arrive
Everything was delivered in two working days. Every headshot came in a range of resolutions, large for print, smaller for web and email signatures, and with the different backgrounds supplied, so each person could pick what works for them. Each file was named with the colleague it belonged to, so any office in the world could find the right person without guessing at a string of numbers.
That last part matters more than it sounds. The marketing team gets the consistent set they need for the website and the global directory. The individuals get a version they're happy to use on LinkedIn. Nobody has to compromise, because the choice is built in rather than argued over after the fact.
What if you don't have guidelines yet?
Plenty of companies don't have a documented photography standard, and that's fine. If you have one, send it over and I'll match it. If you don't, I'll shoot a clean, consistent set with one lighting pattern and one background across the whole team, which becomes the standard you can keep matching as people join. I'll then write that standard up for you, the background colour, the lighting, the settings, so whoever photographs your next hire has something to match to. Either way you end up with headshots that look like they belong to one company.
I bring the studio to your office, photograph the whole team in a day, and you see and approve each person's shots on screen before I leave. The brand guidelines just tell me what the finished set needs to look like. The rest is the same calm, quick session everyone gets.
If your team's headshots are a patchwork of different studios and different years, or you've got a brand book that nobody's photography has actually matched yet, that's exactly the kind of thing I sort out. Have a look at how I work with teams across London and what's involved in a corporate headshot session, then drop me a message.
