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| What you might see when I am photographing you. |
I have to admit I have started and stopped writing and revising this post multiple times over the past two months, as I navigated the uncertainty we are probably all to various extents still feeling. No time ever felt like the right time to reach out about doing corporate (or any) portraits. But I think now that September is here and summer holidays are done people may be more receptive to embracing the need for updated photography. And likely by now if you’ve wanted a hair cut you’ve been able to get one, and if you’ve decided to forgo colouring your hair your natural colour has grown all the way out. You may also be part of the growing and overdue movement to start embracing your naturally textured hair.
Also helpfully, we are further along to road to coming out the other end of this pandemic. As I write almost 80% of adults in Ontario my age group are vaccinated (including me). And we continue to observe Covid protocols on shoots. So we are finally, truly, back in business.
Yes, for many people it will be high time for an updated profile portrait or updated staff or leadership team portraits, so where to start?
3 things to do to prepare for a portrait shoot:
1) Step 1 is to book a hair cut if you haven’t already. With reduced capacity at salons it may take longer than usual to get an appointment with your stylist, so you may need more lead time than usual.
2) Find something flattering to wear that fits, a more challenging task for many due to after effects of the pandemic. I have a wardrobe blurb I share with all portrait clients, and one of the most important points in it is to wear something you feel great in and that fits nicely…not too tight or too loose. With any button up top or jacket you want to be able to do it up without any strain. So, it might be time to buy a new jacket. (If you’re interested check out my video on wardrobe for video calls, adapted from my portrait wardrobe guidelines: https://youtu.be/LMRoP8NIVJY )
3) Think about where it makes sense for you and your team to shoot. With many still working from home it may be that shooting at your office is no longer the best option. These days we divide our time shooting at office locations, my studio, and people’s homes, and often you can’t tell from the resulting portrait which location we were in because…green screens! Yes, I am talking about this technique again. Read on.
Beautiful Backgrounds, Beautiful Portraits - my latest author portrait
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| Author Judith McCormack in my studio |
One of my first post lockdown portrait shoots this year was with lauded author of numerous award-nominated short stories and the brilliant novel Backspring Judith McCormack. I was excited to be able to provide her with the outdoor portraits she wanted without actually having to deal with the sometimes deal-breaking unknowns of shooting outside. For those following my updates you won’t be surprised to know we shot inside against a green screen. This meant we could relax and focus on the portrait knowing that I’d be able to take my time choosing the perfect outdoor environment from my archive after the shoot.
Here’s a link to a larger version of the portrait: https://hollinrake.com/portfolios/authorscelebrities
Here she is, alternatively, in a downtown interior:
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| Same portrait on another background from my archive |
Of course sometimes we want the look of an in-studio shoot, and maybe a bit more drama. We shot the following example in studio against a 5x7 foot green screen.
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| Shot on 5x7 green screen; background is a 9 foot wide seamless. |
The 9 foot wide gray seamless paper backdrop in the image was shot separately. A couple of advantages of shooting this way are 1) we can set up a much smaller set (in a living room for example) than is required to actually shoot against a 9 foot wide seamless (which requires a big space), and 2) we have the flexibility of deciding on the background later, and changing it as needed.
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| Same portrait as above with a light gray background |
The importance of backgrounds
One of the things that distinguishes one portrait photographer from another is, of course, lighting, but as important is the art of choosing the right background. Some portrait techniques and scenarios really limit the options, compromising the potential impact of and message communicated by the final shot. When someone asked me recently about my favourite part of my job I thought of how I feel when I capture a particularly “perfect” background for a future portrait. At the time of my writing this I had just had one of these moments. Having returned from a trip to Oakville to shoot gardens, specifically as backgrounds, I was reviewing the images in full resolution and came upon one that I just didn’t want to stop looking at. So I made it as large as possible on my monitor and just came back to it repeatedly in between working on other things, to get that little hit of joy, the way you do when you look at a piece of art you love, over and over.
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| An outdoor background from my archive |
The next best part is carefully and artfully selecting the appropriate background for a specific portrait and placing that person into that background, and watching the whole portrait come together in a way that could not even have happened without the magic of the green screen. Because while I do shoot these backgrounds as if there is a person there, focusing on an imaginary subject in the foreground to blur the background in camera (because blurring it later in Photoshop will not look the same), actually photographing that person there may have been, in most cases, pretty much impossible for a number of reasons.
Corporate photography might look a little different post-pandemic but there have been some silver linings. I LOVE not being limited by (often) boring available backgrounds. And as a wish-I-could-have-been-a-painter photographer I love the art of creating portraits in this way. I am growing my archive of indoor backgrounds, too, so if you work in an attractive building that is still somewhat empty these days I’d love to drop by and capture a few blurred and unidentifiable but suggestive-of-a-business-environment backgrounds.
Backgrounds make me happy.
If you haven’t seen my previous blog post on green screen shooting please have a look at this where I talk about the advantages of the technique on more detail: http://khollinrakemakemepretty.blogspot.com/2021/04/why-i-love-shooting-portraits-against.html
You can also see a mini-portfolio of green screen portraits at: https://hollinrake.com/pdfs.
Where to shoot wasn’t typically often a question in the past, as more often than not we would come to clients at their offices and organizations. But this has changed. I’m curious to see who goes back to the office, who adopts a hybrid model and who has shifted to a more permanent WFH arrangement. From a photography point of view we can accommodate portrait shoots almost anywhere as there’s almost always room for a green screen. (And no, we don’t HAVE to use a green screen. We can, of course, shoot the ‘normal’ way if there’s somewhere nice and appropriate to shoot).
That said it seems to be working for organizations to call people to the office on a selected date for profile portrait shoots. It has been interesting photographing people who were hired during the pandemic and have never set foot in their organizations’ offices, and who are now meeting colleagues in person for the first time. This certainly has the potential to add a level of stress for those who don’t love having their pictures taken, something to keep in mind.
And that's it for my latest blurb on portraits and backgrounds. I hope this may have filled in a few gaps for the reader. Thanks so much for your interest! And please get in touch if you need photography for your business. I look forward to working with you.
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