Our latest product is perfect for GP’s surgeries. The short video above introduces our staff boards.
A staff board will help build trust and confidence from your patients; they will also feel more included and more looked-after if your team are on show, rather than hiding behind closed doors.
To discuss staff board requirements, please give us a ring on 01509 808 689 or get in touch via our contact page!
Like the question of conventional or challenging photography, another aspect of the photographer’s art is whether images are planned or reactive. Many photographers thrive on one or the other of these working styles, a few thrive on both.
Here at The Business Portrait Company, we thrive on planned photography. That’s part of the reason we always offer a consultation before a shoot at no charge; to identify the important aspects of the shoot before getting on-site and bringing the correct order to the scene to tell the required story.
There are a number of services we provide. Though we only generally talk about our speciality—business portraits—we also provide other planned photography such as product shots, food photography and interior photography.
What sets this work apart from, for example, an awards ceremony is the time taken to compose a precise shot. To get it just right in the camera. An awards ceremony gives a few short seconds to compose, focus, shoot and the person moves on for the next one to come along.
Even our standard, simple headshots take around ten minutes per person. The reason is that to really get someone’s character across into the lens a period of warming-up is required. The sitter must be comfortable with the camera. The photographer makes conversation with the sitter, and looks for the areas their life—in work, or outside—that make them most proud… that make them sit up an inch taller, when the chin lifts very slightly, when the eyes exude confidence.
You can never fully plan a photograph; there is always scope for the lighting to suddenly change, or something to suddenly happen that affects the shot. However, by planning as much as possible, the very best results are achieved.
“Planned” does not have to mean “stuffy”. It’s possible to plan to be dynamic, plan to look lively, plan to look natural. Without a plan, the photographer merely reacts to their surroundings; an enviable skill indeed, but not necessarily one suitable for formal portrait photography.
One aspect of a photograph is how ‘conventional’ it is; how predictable. It’s something that requires careful thought when commissioning photography.
Usually, for business photos, conventional is a good choice. Especially in products, architecture and interiors, the viewer expects a clear, unambiguous style; they do not want to work hard to see what they should be looking at.
Portraits can take a more conventional or challenging approach. It’s possible to stand out with a more challenging shot; one that is unpredictable or unusual in some way. However, making a shot challenging for the sake of it is not a good reason… there must be a more compelling reason to challenge the viewer.
A challenging shot has downsides: the intended message may be misinterpreted by the viewer. What one person thinks of as quirky style may be seen as flippant or irresponsible by others. What one person thinks of as light-hearted may be seen as stupid by others. Another downside is that the unique, bespoke creativity can make it difficult to repeat the work – business is often about scalability; can you repeat the photographic style in 18 months when there are more staff to photograph? Can newer photos stand next to older photos without standing out?
One further potential downside, in certain areas, is that challenging has become conventional. In a sea of novel processing—on Instagram, for instance—novel is now becoming commonplace. You could, however, stand out instantly by posting a very conventional image.
Our standard headshots provide consistent predictability. The photographs do not challenge the viewer. They are repeatable months and even years later. We are not afraid, though, of going into the challenging territory if you a) desire such photographs and b) are willing to take the risks associated with going away from the norm. Let’s talk… 01509 808 689.
Robert Capa was a photojournalist who, from 1936 until 1954, covered five different wars. He said
If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.
and while we’re not suggesting that business portrait photography has any relation to war photography, he’s right – a subject shouldn’t be lost in an image.
If you look at the photographs of your LinkedIn contacts, generally the least effective are those where the photographer is standing at a distance to the subject; where a whole body or waist-up appears in the image. More effective is the true ‘headshot photograph’, where just the head appears.
Taking it a step further, and this is what we almost always recommend; it is possible to get in even closer. Look through your contacts for people who’s face doesn’t fit in the profile picture box. As long as the main features appear in the image, other features such as the top of the head, the ears, maybe even the chin can be lost out of the edges of the frame.
See how engaging these images are? It’s as if the subject is looking through a small square port-hole directly at you. And as an additional benefit, their features are so clear in the small size that no mistaken identity will occur.
We’ve said it before, and will say it again. Get in close!
So you have a photo of yourself that you like. It looks professional and projects the desired image. You’ve checked that it doesn’t appear on the five don’ts of LinkedIn list. What now?
If you have photographs provided by us, you don’t need to worry about any of this; all packages include images processed for LinkedIn so you can upload directly. If, however, you’re using your own photos read on…
The first stage is to crop the image. Social media profiles usually have a square image. If you upload a rectangular image, it will ask you to choose a square for the thumbnail.
There are usually two temptations here; the first is to include the whole head and shoulders, like a passport photo, the second is to position the face right in the centre of the image.
A more ‘balanced’ approach can come from using the rule of thirds. This is a classic compositional tool used in all graphic work.
Draw an imaginary ‘noughts and crosses’ board on your image, and compose using those lines. If you have horizontal or vertical lines in your composition, place them on the lines you have drawn. If you have more ‘point-like’ objects, they look balanced if they are placed on one of the four points where the lines intersect.
In this case, we’re going to place the line of the eyes along the top of the horizontal lines.
It’s a matter of taste whether you are happy with the top of the head being ‘chopped off’. But when you consider how small the LinkedIn photo will be, it’s worth getting in close.
As you look through the images in LinkedIn you may see some very creative composition and cropping. There’s nothing wrong with that… but it’s well worth knowing the ‘rules’ before you start breaking them!
Creativity is often about breaking the established rules in a purposeful manner.You must know why you’re breaking a rule, and what the implications are. Ignorance of the rules mustn’t be mistaken for breaking them with purpose!
The cropped image is still probably pretty large. There’s no point uploading an image that’s 1800 pixels wide when it’s going to be placed into a tiny window. More importantly, if you don’t resize the image LinkedIn will do it for you, losing detail. It’s better to keep the process under your control.
The maximum size that LinkedIn will display is 500×500 pixels, but in most cases where the photo is shown, it will appear smaller. Since you only get to upload one image for a number of sizes, go for something in the region of 400×400 pixels as a happy medium.
Once your resize is done, it’s time to sharpen. Using the ‘unsharp mask’ tool gives the best results it it’s available. Be careful, though; oversharpening looks worse than not doing it at all.
You want the details to shine out of the image without the edges becoming too pronounced. Note, particularly, the shine in the eyes on the centre image. On the overdone image, the hair and ear are starting to look pretty strange.
Now you’ve made the effort to prepare your image to look its best, please don’t mess it up at the last stage; saving your image.
Most graphic software will allow you to set an image quality on saving. The reason for this is that computer images (in jpg format, to be accurate) use what’s called ‘lossy compression’. This makes the image files take up less room on your hard drive than they would if they were in full detail; but the downside is that they do lose that detail.
With a small image like a profile picture, there is no real reason to use a low quality setting. The image files don’t take up a lot of space in any case. But your image software may have a default setting that is too low.
Notice that as the quality value drops, the image becomes more ‘blocky’. Detail is lost into what we call ‘artefacts’. These low quality pictures are hugely common on LinkedIn and other profiles. Look out for small blocks of miscoloured or mis-shapen image.
Note that some software will have a ‘compression’ option. This is just the opposite; make sure the compression is low enough that the quality is suitable.
Good work! Now you know how to take an image and make it look its best on LinkedIn. When you spot other people with non-ideal crops; or blocky, low-quality images you can now point them in this direction.
Huge thanks to Darrel Brookes of UCR Consultants for permission to use his headshot in these examples. And thanks to you, our readers, also! Please share your questions, comments and other thoughts below… let’s talk…
Ask someone to think ‘photographer’ and it won’t be long before their mind turns to weddings. Many people believe that those who carry a camera (amateur or professional) are capable of taking any style of photographs. This really is not the case.
Analogies might be the restaurant industry. McDonald’s has cooking equipment and chefs, but you probably wouldn’t expect them to turn out a decent cordon bleu meal. Why not? Because McDonald’s provides hamburgers. They don’t even provide amazingly good hamburgers. But what they do do is know how to deliver your average hamburger. A hamburger designed to taste the same wherever you go in the world. A hamburger designed specifically so the pickles don’t fall out. A hamburger designed to be cooked by a teenager on a minimum level of training.
Your local gourmet restaurant provides fantastic food. They might even make hamburgers. But try asking them to feed 2000 hungry people in a hurry on a busy Saturday, and to do if for £3.99 per head. They’d probably struggle.
So it is with photography.
We, at The Business Portrait Company provide business headshot photography and other bespoke photography for business owners. We know how to make a businessperson look good; to look competent and credible. We know how to deliver to business.
We’re not concerned with albums of prints, or how to make a baby laugh, or how to make a loving couple look even more loving than they already do. We’re not interested in lying in a muddy puddle for six hours waiting for that stoat to peek its head out of its hole in just the right way. We’re not interested in selling hastily snapped photos, printed on-site for £10 each to eventgoers.
We do business photographs. And we do it well.
Who do you know that might require the specialist touch of an expert business photographer? A warm introduction to The Business Portrait Company would be most appreciated.
An interesting article by Jakob Nielsen (“the guru of web page useability”) shows a case where photographs of team members received 10% more attention on a page than the written biographies next to them. This is despite the fact that each photo only took up 32% of the space taken by a biography.
People buy from people, and they want to see people on your website!
Even more interestingly, the article also shows a ‘stock’ photo being almost completely ignored by the viewer. These are the photos bought from an online library to ‘fluff up’ a website, but without adding any informative content.
The viewer is looking, consciously or unconsciously, for information about your company. They will make snap decisions while viewing your photos—are these the kind of people I would want to buy from?
An article from Business Insider goes into The Biggest Mistakes You Can Make When Choosing A LinkedIn Photo. The same decisions apply to “Meet The Team” photographs.
After identifying the problems, they then go on to identify 5 tips to choose (or have created) the most appropriate photographs for professional use. Naturally, at The Business Portrait Company, we can help you with several of these points…
1. Dress to reflect the atmosphere of the profession that you’re in or hope to join.
Our What to Wear? guide gives general advice to ensure you are suitably dressed, both for the camera and for the passage of time. You, the subject, will have to decide on exactly how dressed up, or down, you want to appear; but the guide will help you in your decisions.
2. Choose a picture that conveys your energy and personality.
This is the key to all portrait photography. An inexperienced photographer, or “mate with a camera” may be fumbling with technical issues, or nervous about the shoot – this will have a knock-on effect to you, the sitter. Our photographers are technically proficient, meaning that all of their attention is on you; making you look great!
3. Be aware of your posture. Sit up straight. Good posture signifies confidence and competence.
Again, our photographers will pose you. We ask you to sit on the edge of the chair because we know it encourages you to sit up and not slouch. We make conversation with you and find out what brings out your confidence, what makes you sit two inches taller, what makes your eyes light up. Then in a split second, we capture that moment.
4. Make sure your eyes are relaxed and you have a smile on your face.
It is so common to see otherwise good photos ruined by a look of anxiety on the face of the sitter. This is often caused by an inexperienced or ‘bossy’ photographer. We realise that you’re in an unfamiliar situation and do all we can to relax you, to warm you up to the camera, to get you to forget you’re being photographed. That’s when the eyes will relax.
And we never demand that you smile. We’d rather a relaxed, neutral, confident expression than a grinning lunatic. If you’re naturally smily, the smile will come across anyway. If not, you will merely look confident and happy.
5. Posting a photo is a must, especially for women who have married and changed their names. Or if you have a common name such as “Nicole Williams,” since there can be several people with the same name on the site.
So, what are you waiting for!
1. Business Photos – For ‘meet the team’, web and print use.
2. Business Portraits for LinkedIn – For social networking profiles, LinkedIn, Twitter and more.
3. Corporate Photos – For business owners who want bespoke images that tell the story.
At The Business Portrait Company, we have the very best studio equipment to make the highest-quality images possible of our clients. Our studio is, however, nearer than you might think!
Since we began really focussing on our mobile service in January, we’ve been setting up the full studio kit in meeting rooms all over the area. It’s a quick operation, taking around 30 minutes at most.
The benefits are huge:
Who do you know that needs professional headshot photographs, but is too busy to make a trek to a studio. Please introduce us, or get them to give us a call… 01509 808 689.
As you are probably aware, most of The Business Portrait Company’s work concentrates on portrait photography – connecting with the subject, getting their character out of them and on to the page.
Hair photography requires different equipment and different skills. The photographer’s job is to capture the scene as a sculpture, with graphic lines and considered lighting. The model is not the main subject of the image – they are there in a supporting role, to add life without taking too much attention from the creation.
The Business Portrait Company has both the equipment and skills required for successful hair photography, as demonstrated by this recent shoot for Mubu Hairdressing.
If you want a great hair style, we can recommend Mubu! If you want high-quality pictures of one or more hairstyles, give us a call… 01509 808 689.
We received an interesting challenge during a meeting today. Speaking to a former client who’s launching a new venture, they are going to want headshots of their team – nothing out of the ordinary there.
But they’re also going to have a requirement for a huge number of headshots on top of that… and this is where we were able to think outside the box a little. There’s no way we can go along every time a new person requires a headshot; so what we’ll be doing is specifying a compromise set-up, one that the business can buy in that’s easy to manage, easy to use and will get much better results than a “point-and-shoot” camera.
Then we’ll be tutoring the team on how to use the setup, giving a few pointers and then letting them get on with their own photography. The results won’t be as high-quality as a full studio set-up, but they will be perfectly servicable for the required purpose.
Just one of those value-added services we can provide. If you know someone who might require tuition, consultation or equipment specification for photographic work, we are more than happy to help out. Give them our number… 01509 808 689.
This is also a great example of how BNI (of which we are proud members) can help a business through mutual support and not just passing business referrals.