Our clients are the best. They value every part of our business photography service and see that putting a job on is so much more than what happens on professional headshot day. Sure, our first in-person contact might be when they walk in the door for their professional portrait, but there is so much that happens ahead of that moment. We are happy to share some of what happens up until the moment we click that first corporate headshot.

The preparation starts on the first communication with a client. At this initial conversation we are starting to make a plan. First we want to know the scope of the job. What type of services do you need? Are you looking for website headshots or general corporate headshots for your staff of 30? Do you want us to provide LinkedIn headshots for an upcoming date where your entire industry is coming together? We are thinking about how much time you need and what kind of venue it will be.

We want to know what you want the photos to look like. Are you looking for all of your professional headshots to be against a uniform background? If yes, we start to think about your space in terms of whether it can accommodate a 9' background. What color background do you want for those corporate portraits? Do we have that color in stock or will we source that from one of our vendors? Do you want it to be an environmental shot that includes more of the office? If yes, we start to ask you questions about, for example, what your boardroom looks like or is there a space where we could do it without people wandering through a background.

Other planning includes how many portraits you need our corporate headshot photographer to take. This tells us how many hours or days we will be in your office. Finally, we want to know how you will be using the images. This helps us plan for how the images will be taken, what file size you need, and what kind of work will go into post-production for us.

All of these things help us put together a proposal. This is the start of a plan that sets the framework on how we will build the logistics for this job.

So you love what we present and say, yes! Let's do it! What's next?

We show up at your door and take a few pictures and call it a day.

Yeah right.

The first thing we do is get you on the calendar and make spend time thinking through who the right staff is for your job. We are lucky to have a group of talented corporate headshot photographers that are trained in our business photography technique. They know how to take a professional portraits and how to make a client feel comfortable in front of the camera.

The dog offers moral support as we pack up our professional headshot gear at the studio.

Next we head to our studio. If you are going with, say our not-so-corporate profile photograph with a grey background, we know just the equipment to pull for your job. We look at lights, cameras and backgrounds that we have in-house. We pack up all the grip (hardware like background supports, clamps, etc. that support the other equipment) and make sure our computers and wifi are up-to-date and can be operated in your space. This kind of prep takes a few hours. The more specialized the professional portrait, the more time we spend planning and getting the right equipment together.

Ian preparing for our business photography shoot in the studio.

While clients find that they can be pretty hands-off with us, we do have to have another conversation to discuss logistics. We confirm the building address. We ask if there is a loading dock. Are there insurance requirements for the building? What floor are you on? What room will we set up in? Who will be our day-of contact we can call, should we hit a snag at any point between the street and the room where we are shooting? Exchanging cell phone numbers with our client is a MUST.

Here is something that not everyone knows. We get to every job at least 2hrs in advance of our first shot. So if your first employee wants their headshot at 9am, we need to be there at 7am to start our setup. That means someone on your team needs to be at the office at 7am to let us in.

Our clients ask us, “Do you need 2 full hours to setup for a corporate headshot?”

Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but we always plan for it. On so many of our jobs we are navigating through a space where we have never been. Simply getting into the right room can take time.

At a busy loading dock in an NYC skyscraper, for example, there are many steps to getting to our final destination in the building. We are checking in at the loading dock. The same person who cleared our entrance the day before might not be on the morning crew so it can take a minute (or 30) before the loading dock team locates our clearance. There might be a line for the freight elevators with all the other vendors trying to get to their clients. There might be a long walk with our gear from the loading dock entrance to the elevators and then another long walk when we get up to your floor.

These are all expected parts of our day so you won't hear any grumbling from us. These are busy buildings with many many moving parts. It's our job to plan for the environment we are working in and get through all of the hurdles before without breaking a sweat.

As much as we plan together with the clients, there are almost always unexpected elements in the course of our setup for executive headshots. Maybe our contact hits traffic and we get into the room a little late. Perhaps the furniture in the room we are using hasn't been moved to accommodate our setup. Perhaps we have an issue with a piece of our own equipment.

Our corporate headshot team is ready to go!

The problems are never insurmountable and we do not always know what they will be. In the 10+ years we have been doing this, we have learned that planning ahead and building in plenty of time is are the best ways to make things go smoothly. If this means we have time for a coffee before our start time, we are happy. Our aim is to be cool and calm with camera in hand when that first subject walks through the door for their corporate headshot.