The Most Essential Tips For Creating Awesome Professional Corporate Portrait

Professional corporate portrait photography is a potent marketing tool, meticulously crafted to showcase a corporation positively. It communicates competence and professionalism. At the same time, it also fosters credibility and trust with stakeholders and potential customers. In the realm of corporate representation, these portraits are a concise and powerful means of making a lasting impression.

Tip 1 – Understanding the Characteristics of a Professional Corporate Portrait Photography Singapore

Professional corporate portrait photography is not just about capturing the personality of the subject, but rather the personality that is in line with the corporation’s identity.

The most common mistake seen in corporate portraits is the confusion between corporate portraits and other forms of portraits, especially resume portraits. We must first understand the characteristics of a corporate portrait in order to differentiate between them.

1. Branding: Professional corporate portrait photography can help to convey the corporation’s branding, philosophy and direction. A resume portrait is typically more neutral. Resume portraits usually present the individuals in a friendly and approachable manner.
2. Personality: Professional studio corporate headshot showcase the subject’s personality that is in line with the corporation’s identity. They can also reflect the subject’s role and position within the company. For instance, their confidence, charisma and authority.
3. Purpose: Professional corporate portrait photography is used for annual reports, public relations (editorial or press release) and marketing purposes (company website). These portraits need to represent the corporate image and relate to its stakeholders.
4. Audience: The audience for a corporate portrait is broad. They can range from potential customers to investors and even the general public. Hence, how the subject is portrayed needs to be carefully thought about before starting the photo shoot.

Tip 2 – Focusing on the Eyes

Where words are restrained, the eyes often talk a great deal

Samuel Richardson

The eyes are the windows to the soul. They convey emotions and character to the viewer, inviting them to engage and communicate. The eyes serve as a focal point, leaving a visual impact on viewers. Here are a few points in which the focus from the eyes enhances a corporate portrait.

1. Convey Professionalism: A pair of focused eyes reflect competency, professionalism and credibility. Well-captured eyes evoke positive emotions and favourable perceptions
2. Establish Authenticity: Eye contact can establish trust and foster a strong connection with viewers, enhancing the subject’s authenticity. A truthful eye conveys sincerity, passion and dedication. They make the subject relatable, therefore humanizing the corporate environment
3. Connect with the Audience: The eyes serve as a focal point, captivating the viewers. Direct eye contact signals that the person is transparent and reliable, reinforcing the perception of trustworthiness.

Individual headshots for the Leadership Team

Tip 3 – Feeling at Ease/confident/inspired

1. Building trust and rapport between the subject and the photographer is important because the synergy between the two people helps create unique and dynamic portraits.
2. The subject will start to feel comfortable and relaxed once trust and rapport are established between them.
3. The photographer will need to coach and guide in order to bring out the suitable expression of the subject.
4. Reviewing an image immediately after creating it is helpful because both the photographer and the subject can fine-tune the look instantly. This can be styling, expression or lighting. However, this will require tethering through a laptop or tablet, with a colour-calibrated monitor so that the colours and exposure can be viewed correctly.

Here are some behind-the-scenes images of a tethered workflow during a commercial photoshoot. Everyone can see the images almost immediately, thus minimizing any errors and miscommunications about the final results.

Behind-the-scene portrait session

Tip 4 – Catering sufficient time for preparations and the photoshoot

This is one tip that I cannot stress enough on. Preparation time is extremely important. Both parties need to allocate enough resources for the pre-shoot preparations and the photography duration. This is the time when we do research on our subjects, recce the location and even test out the lighting.

For corporate clients going on photoshoots, we would recommend catering sufficient time for it. There is no need to induce unnecessary stress to rush for the portrait session to complete as soon as possible. It is very common for subjects to feel uncomfortable at the beginning of the shoot. But after getting warmed up and going through a few reviews of their portraits, they become more relaxed ( Tip 2).

Tips 2 and 3 are the basis of a professional portrait. To achieve them, sufficient time is necessary.

Singapore Environmental Portrait Photography

There are times when efficiency and quality need to strike a very tricky balance. For instance, in the series of corporate portraits below, we shot 3300 corporate headshots for Khoo Teck Phuat Hospital in Singapore. Going by an average of 2 minutes per headshot, we have to work effectively. Lighting was pre-set and the position of the subject marked so we could replicate the same results on every person. However, we still make sure each person arrives 15 minutes in advance to prepare themselves for the photoshoot. It helps sometimes to let the subjects view the photographer at work, seeing others’ images on the tablet and laptop(Tip 3).

Corporate portrait photography Singapore for organisation

Tip 5 – Tone and style of Corporate portrait

A corporate portrait is usually more formal and polished. It focuses on projecting a strong and confident image, as well as an emphasis on the subject’s personality, authority and leadership qualities. The images should highlight the subject’s role and position within the company, thus allowing stakeholders to form a connection with the individual and the brand.

Tip 6 – Lighting and Background

A professional corporate portrait photography session may involve more elaborate lighting and background setups. This is because it needs to create a more visually striking image that is consistent with the company’s branding.

There are 2 main types of settings for a corporate portrait. A studio setting with a plain monochrome background or environmental settings set in the office or related locations.

a. Studio Setting

For a studio setting with monochrome background, the background is usually white, grey or black. Some companies might choose to have their corporate colour as the backdrop colour which can help make the usual portraits more in line with their branding. A monochrome background will focus the attention on the subject.

Everyone’s facial features, heights and shapes are different, therefore the lighting needs to tweak subtly to adjust for each subject’s features. However as the backgrounds generally look the same, they can easily be viewed as a wholesome and unified corporate portrait series.

b. Environmental Settings

Sometimes, portraits are set in an environmental setting to produce a more natural and engaging image. These types of images are usually used for editorial and public release. When working with environmental shots, care needs to be taken in choosing what are the details that can be captured.

The setting in the environmental shots should help in the storytelling. Removing all distracting elements helps to keep the image clean and focus the attention back on the subject.

Here are some examples of more elaborate corporate portraits for the Singapore International Festival of The Arts by The Arts House Ltd

We created these 2 portraits during the same photoshoot session. The left image looks more powerful while the right image looks more approachable. The ambient lights created different tones of shadows in both settings thus resulting in contrasting looks.

SIFA 2022: Introducing new Festival Director Natalie Hennedige

https://www.expatchoice.asia/whats/singapore-international-festival-art-2022-back-helmed-festival-director-natalie-hennedige

Tip 7 – Going Beyond the Smile

As mentioned in Tip 1, the corporate portrait is not for a resume, hence being friendly and approachable is not usually the main requirement of the portrait. A subtle smile can convey a sense of authority and professionalism more effectively.

But if you really can’t get a good expression, just smile.