Corporate Headshots

I was asked to take some corporate headshots in the office for my Company's website. The challenge was that nobody would be able to spend more than a few minutes getting their picture taken and not everyone would be available on the same day. So taking a leaf out of Kirk Tuck's book; after setting up the lighting to my satisfaction, I made a diagram, wrote down all the flash and camera settings and took a couple of photos of the setup.

It was a pretty simple two light setup. I used one light on the background and another light camera right through a half-silver shoot-through umbrella. In order to get a bit of fill on the left hand side I brought over a a flip chart and placed it on the opposite side to the umbrella. The half-silvered umbrella was interesting. The shadows are a bit harsher than I'm used to with the white shoot through umbrella, which is why I used the white board, but the result isn't unpleasant. But I will probably be using the white ones when my new ones are delivered.

The majority of the shots were done on one day, but with the lighting diagram and notes I was able to set-up, shoot, and break down, in under 15 minutes and that included time travelling in the lift. Even so I found I was having to adjust the exposure slightly to account for differences in distance. And the lighting direction was not quite the same.

One portrait is still left to do, but in the meantime we photoshopped an existing picture to make it match the others. Its interesting to note that the picture of Bill was cut-out to make the white background, and this inexpert job took me longer to do than taking a photo would have.