About the service
A company photo set almost always arrives as a pile of shots taken on different days, in different rooms and by different people. Someone was photographed by a window, someone under a ceiling lamp, someone sent a frame from a phone in a corridor. Placed side by side on a team page, those pictures read as a random collection. So the first thing I do is bring them to a common denominator: the same light, the same warmth of skin, the same distance from the camera, the same quiet background.
Inside a single frame the order of work is always the same. Light first: I lift the dead shadows under the eyes and on the neck and balance the brightness of the face against the background. Then skin colour, where redness, blotches and the yellow cast of office lamps live. Then the small accidents of that particular day, such as a stray strand, a crumpled collar, a patch of glare on the forehead. Clothing and hair get their own pass, because the eye reads them before it reads the face. The background is either cleaned or replaced with an even one, and glasses are handled slowly, so that the reflection leaves without turning the lens into an empty hole. Phone pictures are welcome, they simply need more patience with noise and with the distortion of features near the edge of the lens.
Crops are prepared for every place the portrait will live at once: a wide one for the website, a strict one for documents and passes, a square one for messengers and a small one for an e-mail signature, each exported at the size that place actually asks for.
What the work includes:
— bringing a whole series of employees to one look in light, colour and framing
— evening out skin tone and clearing the accidental flaws of the shooting day
— work with clothing, collars, hair and loose strands
— cleaning or replacing the background, including a plain studio backdrop
— careful treatment of glasses and reflections in the lenses
— crops and export sizes for the site, documents, messengers and signatures
— rescuing pictures taken on a phone
— I do not change facial features or body shape, a business portrait has to stay recognisable, otherwise it does not work
— without the written consent of the employee the photograph is not published, even if the company sent it to me
— I do not take pictures from other people's websites or from social media
Inside a single frame the order of work is always the same. Light first: I lift the dead shadows under the eyes and on the neck and balance the brightness of the face against the background. Then skin colour, where redness, blotches and the yellow cast of office lamps live. Then the small accidents of that particular day, such as a stray strand, a crumpled collar, a patch of glare on the forehead. Clothing and hair get their own pass, because the eye reads them before it reads the face. The background is either cleaned or replaced with an even one, and glasses are handled slowly, so that the reflection leaves without turning the lens into an empty hole. Phone pictures are welcome, they simply need more patience with noise and with the distortion of features near the edge of the lens.
Crops are prepared for every place the portrait will live at once: a wide one for the website, a strict one for documents and passes, a square one for messengers and a small one for an e-mail signature, each exported at the size that place actually asks for.
What the work includes:
— bringing a whole series of employees to one look in light, colour and framing
— evening out skin tone and clearing the accidental flaws of the shooting day
— work with clothing, collars, hair and loose strands
— cleaning or replacing the background, including a plain studio backdrop
— careful treatment of glasses and reflections in the lenses
— crops and export sizes for the site, documents, messengers and signatures
— rescuing pictures taken on a phone
— I do not change facial features or body shape, a business portrait has to stay recognisable, otherwise it does not work
— without the written consent of the employee the photograph is not published, even if the company sent it to me
— I do not take pictures from other people's websites or from social media
