Large Group Professional Headshot Sessions
When the expertise of their team is the main message in a company’s marketing, it is important to have imagery that supports that idea. Walker Information is an Indianapolis-based company focused on helping businesses provide superior customer experiences. They were looking to take professional headshots of their employees for their website.
Walker wanted a wide variety of environments within their shots while keeping the same feel for each image. My challenge was to take the photographs in many areas of their building with different backgrounds while ensuring continuity within the final portraits. Their company culture is friendly, confident and slightly casual and they wanted these ideals portrayed in their shots as well.
This project was one of the few instances where I had to rely on Photoshop to achieve my clients’ goals. To accommodate the schedules of different employees, I was onsite on two different days; one sunny and one day snowy. One of our backdrops was a window, where you could see the weather! I had to use Photoshop to clean out the snow and warm up the background in some of the images.
Shooting professional headshots in many locations offers additional challenges as well. There was different lighting in each room we used – fluorescent in the conference room, incandescent in the break room, and natural light near the windows. Each of those light sources casts a different color, which I need to match my lights too. I use gels on my lights to achieve this look, then I use Photoshop to make tweaks as needed. Knowing ahead of time that my client wanted the flexibility of multiple locations yet maintaining the same feel allowed me to plan for the lighting challenges.
I feel that flexibility is a necessary trait for a photographer to successfully take individual headshots within a large group of people. Although we try to set a specific schedule of where we would be and who would be photographed, meetings run long, phone calls pop up and the best-laid plans go by the wayside. Having a main coordinator within the company is key here, and fortunately, Walker gave me Brenda Mackey. She ensured everyone was photographed where they wanted to be, regardless of the changing schedule. Unlike situations where I take photos with one backdrop so I can just hang out until needed, we had to move quickly and adjust on the spot. Although this job required more coordination on my client’s part, they ended up with headshots that worked for their brand and made their employees happy.
Brenda was kind enough to share a bit about her experience with us:
“We are a consulting company, so the expertise of our employees is the key to the success of our business. Some of the headshots on our website were quite outdated and did not accurately show the personality of our staff. It was important to us to show how each person at Walker Information is different. Paul was totally on board with this idea and visited our space before the shoot to scout out locations in our new building. My colleague and I went around with him to figure out what would work. We then made up a schedule of 6 different locations and time slots. All was going smoothly until Indy go the worst weather day of the entire year! Half of the people who had signed up for portraits were not able to come to the office. Paul took pictures of those who were there, but we had to schedule a makeup day. A few people who were not happy with the first round of pictures and Paul took getting them what they wanted seriously. Those people came to the makeup day and Paul dug deep into why they were not happy. He took care to address their specific issue and make sure we got a good shot the second time. Overall, people were very happy. Quite a few of our employees had never had their picture taken professionally before. Many people immediately put their shots up on LinkedIn and our website now reflects what our company wanted to communicate about our staff. I really enjoyed working with Paul and already referred him to others.”
Thanks, Brenda! If you have a large group in need of individual professional headshots, contact me here.
