Portraits with Personality

One thing I’ve managed not to bang on about for a while is the importance of good quality portrait photos in business, by which I mean genuine photos, well-executed of the people within an organisation, at the very least the key people who need to be the face of the business.

I’m happy to say that fewer businesses and organisations are now using stock imagery as a way to project themselves. Of course it’s still a popular source of images for websites and brochures, but people understand more than ever the importance of including their own personalities in their marketing, but having taken the decision to commission some “real” photography, what other decisions follow from that?

The key decision is what style to go for. A portrait can be formal, informal, serious, light, it can be taken indoors, outdoors, subject looking to camera, subject looking off-camera. There are infinite angles and permutations and most clients want a selection of styles and moods so they have a library of images to call upon for different requirements.

The limiting factor to all this might be how many people need to be photographed within the time available, and how much time each sitter has before they must get back to their desk or their next meeting.

I often find myself allocated a room in which to set up my lights and perhaps a backdrop, but even this basic setup can allow for quite a variety. Outdoors shoots often take longer because the environment is less easily controlled and the location is usually some distance from the office.

It’s important to have a think about the mood and the style of the shots required and the context into which they’ll be published. I’m happy to discuss all this with clients looking for guidance, and of course I’ll talk to their designers too.

Perhaps the most important thing about having portraits done is to remember that these aren’t for the mantlepiece or the family album, they’re for communicating personality and values to clients, which is something stock images cannot do.

I’ve plucked a few random portraits from my archive to give some ideas of what’s possible. There are many more possibilities than I can ever show you.

Using available light and a white wall

Outdoors, looking off-camera, using the available architecture

Standard business portrait in colour taken using lights and a backdrop

Black and white, looking off-camera. This was staged to look un-staged

When ‘specialist’ isn’t special.

“I specialize in natural light photography” is a statement you’ll see on some photographers’ websites, but what does it mean? What is ‘natural light’ and does it make these photographers special?

Let’s get any pretense out of the way first; I’m rarely convinced by such statements. To me the subtext of what they’re saying is, “I don’t know how to use flash, flash scares me so I’ll pretend I don’t need it. I’ll just say I’m a specialist at not using it.”

In essence natural light is any light which isn’t man-made. Sun and moonlight is about it, but looking at some of the ‘natural light’ photographers, they’ll happily pull electric light into their lighting armoury, regardless of the strange colour casts you’ll get on people’s faces under this lighting.

Sometimes the photographer will fix this by turning their pictures to black and white. Which is fine if the client wants black and white. Not so clever if the images are for a colour project.

There are very few photographers around who can genuinely limit themselves to only taking pictures using natural light and nothing else. William Eggleston springs to mind, but I’m not sure you can hire him for your wedding or commercial shoot.

Brian Harris is a working English photojournalist who very rarely uses flash, but can get away with it because of his talent combined with the kinds of commissions he takes on.

Photo taken in a lecture theatre, where light was so low the only option was a portable studio light

As for myself, I often have to work in difficult lighting conditions but make the pictures have a particular style and look. This might mean daylight is sufficient, but often means I have to supplement the daylight (or even replace it entirely) with portable, battery-powered studio flash.

This may not be as simple as pointing and shooting using whatever light there is, but for me the results are worth the extra effort.

If you’re looking at hiring a corporate photographer who “only uses natural light” or “never uses flash”, chances are they just don’t know how to use flash. This isn’t a skill or specialism, it just means they haven’t learned the basic requirements to do the job. It’s always best to check their website first, look out for a dominance of black and white, or strange and inconsistent skin tones. For your projects it’s often important to get a consistent style across all your imagery, and that’s where portable studio flash can help. Oh, and someone who knows how to use it!