Corporate Headshots and Portraits
I am beginning to get requests for corporate headshots and business portraits in Los Angeles that are out of the ordinary and that reflect authenticity. Often clients will see images on my website and ask me to duplicate the style or they will tell me "We want the portraits to be different. More authentic and stylistically different than what we normally see in corporate headshots".These are the clients I most want to work for because they will take a little risk and give me license to dome something more interesting than a typical corporate headshot and portraits They will also pay more money for what they want. They are the clients that I most love working with because it becomes a challenge; something I am in great need of these days. The two images below were among a dozen corporate portraits that I created for Entertainment Partners which was seeking a stylistically different approach to the corporate headshot. Since they service the entertainment industry, they felt that they could be more creative in their portrayal of their leadership.
I was asked to shoot a series of portraits for Thales Corp. for a social media campaign. The challenge was making employees look authentic and interesting. Thales was adamant about the portraits not looking like corporate headshots. So for these portraits, I set up blinds on either side of the subjects with colleagues on either side carrying on a conversation with the subject. So the subject was carrying on a conversation with three people including myself.
My purpose was to force the subjects into a slightly disorienting situation so they would forget they were being photographed. Kind of like trying to juggle three balls and carry on a conversation. Everybody had fun and I was able to get from my subjects moments of authenticity that I may not have gotten otherwise. The client loved the portraits. The images shot below were part of a series of portraits shot for Virgin Galactic. They asked for environmental portraits of their engineering and science staff but I found that the light from open windows was so beautiful I did not have to use any strobes. We just used reflectors and negative fills to shape and fill these corporate headshots. Additionally, for corporate headshots and business portraits, we have been doing composite business portraits to scale; although for these I work with a post-production contractor to make the composite work affordable.
Images 5 & 6 are part of a large headshot project we did for Griffen Capital, who asked if we could shoot 110 people over two days and swap out the backgrounds on everyone. Initially, I thought this would be a loss leader because I had never done this before, but I would do it to see how it could be done at a profit. I think it worked out for my client and myself and now we do this regularly for other clients. We do a fair share of corporate headshots and portraits in Los Angeles and I think swapping out the backgrounds is a great way to create a difference for the company willing to use that option.
