How to have a successful Executive Headshot Day for your staff
In this article, we’ll explain our processes for an Executive Headshot Day for multiple staff members, what you’ll need to consider before booking your photographer, and how we make these types of photography projects run smoothly, to give you a professional set of photos for your company website, email signatures, and social media campaigns.
1) Choosing Your Photographer
If you’ve managed a photography project for your company before or if this is your first time, choosing the right photographer for your specific need (in this case, Headshot Photography), is essential. Photography has many different genres and niches, so picking one with lots of experience in their niche is essential. When it comes to Executive Headshots, involving dozens, or scores of people at your place of work, it’s important to work with a studio photographer who is well-versed in corporate etiquette and has confidence, flare, and creativity.
Hot Tip: Set up a call or video meeting with your prospective photography studio before you book to ensure they will be a good fit for your business.
“Stuart made our staff feel comfortable during their staff headshots. The photos are great and really capture our team! He was accommodating, professional and friendly. I would highly recommend Stuart for your portrait and photography needs.”
2) Scheduling made simple for your Team
A popular choice for companies is to schedule the photographer on the same day of a quarterly or annual meeting when all executives and associates are together at the same location. These days, many companies operate an “office day”, when all staff is expected to be in the office, which is also a great day to book your headshot photographer.
So, you’ve booked your photographer but now you are faced with the daunting task of scheduling the individual sessions for every member of staff. Rather than offer a “walk-up” service, we prefer to have a list of the people we’re seeing by having staff schedule their session ahead of time. As the project lead, you could make a list of names, but a much simpler way is to take advantage of our scheduling tool.
Our scheduling system allows us to make individual time slots available for your Picture Day. We send the project lead the booking link, which can be shared with the team. They choose a time that works best for their schedule, and they’ll get a reminder when their slot time is approaching. Also, we know exactly who we’re seeing and at what time. We have found this to be the best way to keep the day running smoothly and on time for everyone!
3) Choosing Your backdrop or Setting
A big consideration when choosing the aesthetic and setting for your staff headshots is what happens when you have a new hire. Or, what if you have someone out sick or on holiday on Picture Day!? Don’t worry, we have you covered! Before we go into more detail on that, here are some other considerations when choosing the backdrop for your staff headshots.
Our studio has a range of different backdrop options and colors, which can be set up at your place of work (provided there is room for it), which gives a more traditional look and feel for your staff headshots. I.E. A plain, neutral backdrop, such as white, grey, black etc.).
Alternatively, if you prefer a more contemporary look, we can picture your staff in a more natural, authentic, or environmental setting. If your workspace, surgery, office, factory, or lab has areas available, we can position your team in a way that represents what they do and the industry they work in. This is popular for many companies we serve.
If you have an area outside at your location, this can also be a popular choice, but we’ll need to factor in the weather, especially in New England!
Here are examples of staff headshots with plain, studio backdrops and then environmental portraits:
All these options are worth some thought and it’s often a good idea to talk to your web designer or Heads of Marketing beforehand about how the headshots and portraits will appear on the company website.
We raised the question of new hires and absent employees earlier. To overcome this common issue, if opting for one of our studio backdrops, you can choose to send new hires to our studio and we will easily replicate everything as if they were there on the day!
If you’re opting for the environmental/natural backdrop, we always take a picture of the setting (without a person in the picture) and then use our editing tools to switch out the studio backdrop with the same setting as everyone else.
Hot Tip: It’s worth checking with your photographer if they have a separate space to offer these additional and essential services. We do this for many of our repeat clients.
4) What should we wear?
What to wear for My Business Headshot Session
This is probably the most commonly asked question we get. If you’re giving staff free rein for their outfits on Picture Day, (as opposed to having everyone wear a company-branded uniform) we have a whole article on suggested outfits for headshots, which is worth checking out: WHAT TO WEAR FOR MY HEADSHOT SESSION
5) Onsite Photo Proofing
When working onsite with staff members, we believe it’s important that everyone has a chance to take a peek at their pictures throughout the mini-session. It’s not a full proofing session, just more of a check to make sure the staff members are happy and content with their pictures, on camera. However, cameras have a very small screen to ‘review” pictures, but we now make reviewing easy. We have the technology to live cast all pictures onto a separate, larger screen, which makes onsite, instant feedback quick and easy!
6) Post Production and Delivering your Photos
Your company Picture Day was a great success. In the studio, we select the best photos from everyone’s session, lightly edit, crop, color correct, and upload the proofs to our proofing website. Our website is designed to make reviewing, image selections, and the final delivery of photos a simple process for our business clients.
Our proofing website allows us to subdivide each person’s proofs into separate and password-protected (if desired) albums so that staff members can only access and review their own photos.
Everyone will choose their favorite pose, which we can see from our side, for us to professionally retouch and subtly perfect the final choices. We add all retouched photos to a separate album within the gallery and deliver the finished photos to the project lead, where they can be easily downloaded.
Job done!
Hot Tip: Ask your photographer how they handle this very important part of the process. And if proofing and delivery of photos is via a service like Dropbox or Google Drive etc. it will not give you or your staff a simple or positive proofing experience!
Thanks for reading. If you have any questions, we’d love to help take your company’s executive headshots to the next level.
