The photography on a team headshot day is the easy part. What decides whether it works is the half hour of organising somebody does beforehand. Here is what that half hour should cover.
Pick the room by its size, not its view
I need about four metres of depth: two for the subject to stand away from the background, and two more for me to be far enough back that faces do not distort. Width matters less. Ceiling height matters more than people expect, because the lights go up high and point down.
A meeting room with the table pushed against a wall is ideal. A boardroom with a fixed table in the middle is the worst room in most buildings, and reception is second worst, because everybody walking through becomes an audience and people stiffen up.
Windows are fine. I will usually shut the blinds, since consistent light across the whole day is the entire point of the exercise.
Book people in slots, and stagger them
Ten minutes a person is a comfortable slot. Some are done in four minutes, some need twelve, and it averages out. What ruins a day is a queue: eight people standing in a corridor watching each other get photographed, all becoming steadily more self-conscious.
Two things fix that. Slots in a shared calendar so people arrive alone, and putting the hardest people to schedule in the first hour. The chief executive who might get pulled into something at eleven should be photographed at nine.
Send one email, and put the useful things in it
Most staff have no idea what to expect, and the vacuum fills with dread. A short note a week ahead removes most of it:
- Where and when, with their slot time.
- That it takes about ten minutes.
- Plain colours photograph better than busy patterns or logos.
- Bring a second layer if they want options, a jacket or a different shirt.
- They will be told what to do, so they do not need to practise anything.
That last line does more good than the rest combined.
Agree the level of formality in advance
A set falls apart when half the team wore suits and half wore t-shirts, because the page then looks like two different companies. Somebody senior should decide and say so: either “business dress” or “however you normally come to work”. Both work. Mixing them does not.
Decide the background before the day, not during it
Light grey reads as neutral and professional and sits well on almost any website. White is cleaner and less forgiving, and needs more space. Photographing people in the actual office, out of focus behind them, looks warmer but is harder to keep consistent between the person shot at nine and the person shot at four.
Any of the three is a defensible choice. Changing your mind at lunchtime is not, because the morning and afternoon halves will never match.
Plan for the people who are not there
Somebody will be off sick, and somebody will be in Frankfurt. Rather than leaving two gaps in the team page for a year, keep a note of the setup: the background, the lighting positions, the lens. I keep that on file for every client, which means a new starter in six months can be photographed to match rather than to approximate.
What you should get back
One edited portrait per person, cropped consistently, colour matched across the set, retouched lightly. If a team page is going to look deliberate, the frames have to be interchangeable, and that is a decision made at the shoot rather than rescued afterwards.
If you want to talk through a day for your own team, send me the date and the headcount and I will tell you how many hours it needs.