As a longtime commercial portrait photographer, I’m thrown into situations where a standard formal portrait isn’t called for. What’s needed is a portrait that focuses on a subject and has a more “cinematic”—a treatment and approach that may feel more ‘movie-like’, using precise lighting and positioning. The result is a dynamic, rich portrait with a contemporary feel that grabs attention.
I’m happy to share some environmental portraits I created recently of new InterMed CEO Roger Poitras, along with his executive team. InterMed is one of Maine’s largest doctor practices and operates primary care facilities in South Portland, Yarmouth and Portland. The assignment was to capture environmental portraits of Poitras that incorporated aspects of InterMed’s landmark Marginal Way building.
The dreaded group portrait. Just the prospect of wrangling potentially dozens of subjects strikes fear in the hearts of many a photographer and can result in images that recall an old-school wedding party photo.
Team portraits in particular are a challenge for companies whose amazing image is no sooner published than invariably one member decides to quit or retire. Such portraits may have a limited shelf life, then, but still can be a powerful way to convey a mood and feeling around the collective that makes your company successful.
Allowing enough time for the portrait is critical. Lighting—enough to make your team members look great and minimize any distracting details in the background—is a must. Careful posing of team members can make even large groups look manageable: I do this by arranging large groups into smaller clusters of people, typcially no larger than five, placed at varying distances from the lens to create centers of interest. Last, backgrounds are critically important to telling the story of your team and the group being photographed. Keep them simple, graphic and relevant.
You may not be able to control how long your employees will stay with the company, but with some planning you can turn your team portraits into something they’re proud to be a part of.
If you’re responsible for marketing at your company (or one-person shop), one single word can induce sweating, bouts of self-doubt and even some wistful headshaking: content.
Since online content platforms (i.e., social media) are both inexpensive and readily available, any bottlenecks in producing consistent, high-quality (and brand-appropriate) content is usually on the production side (you), not on the delivery side.
So what’s your content strategy? What tactics will you need to take to produce great content and to share it consistently? When you hire a photographer to produce amazing images and video, are you asking questions like these?
You should be.
Tactics—like hiring a photographer—are easy and fun, or at least distracting and engrossing. They are all about the ‘doing’ part and it’s tempting to skip ahead. But strategy happens first. What are your social media goals? That is, what does your brand want to actually accomplish, long term? All of the following goals require different tactics:
Brand Awareness
Also known as, Getting Your Name Out There. Your content should be authentic to your brand, convey your brand personality and values…ie., your ‘voice’. It shouldn’t be overly promotional.
Grow Your Audience
You have to engage on your social media channels, and looking for ways to introduce your brand to people who haven’t heard of you before. Monitoring channels for specific keyword phrases will alert you to conversations that you might be able to contribute value to.
Engage Your Community
How are you interacting and staying top of mind with your current subscribers? Asking questions, being responsive and promoting user generated content can all help.
Generate Leads and sales
Integrate your service offerings and products into your social profiles. Run exclusive deals for your followers. Alert customers to new products and promos.
Drive traffic
Promotional posts and social ads that point viewers back to your website.
One last thing. You can’t do all of it all at once. Pick just two of the goals from the above list, and work on those exclusively as you measure your results.
Whether you are creating original content yourself, hiring a professional photographer, or simply curating and sharing, make sure to keep your goals in mind.
Photography is all about light, of course—the literal meaning of the word in Greek is ‘drawing with light’. Without light, there can be no photography.
But what makes photography remarkable and powerful is something else. While video and film are all about the story—how all the individual parts contribute to the narrative, the still image is all about moment.
Of the thousands of images you’ve seen or created in your lifetime, what makes the relatively few images stand out as special?
I’d bet it’s that these images capture a fleeting, authentic, remarkable moment. Moments can be a shared interaction between mother and daughter; they can be a simple expression in the eyes or on the lips. A moment can be a gesture, but it can also be a ray of sunlight hitting the perfect spot. It’s a person caught in mid-leap over a puddle, ala Bresson. It’s that peak moment of joy, of anguish, or of maximum exertion during a sporting event.
It can be hard to define in words what a photographic moment is, but you undoubtedly know it when you see it. Moments can be momentous or quiet and subtle. The impact of a true visual moment, however, is immediate and profound. It connects with the viewer and pulls them in.
If you want your images to be remembered, be attuned to what photography great Henri Cartier-Bresson termed the ‘Decisive Moment’. Don’t take photos: capture moments.
Sometimes, the best way to get a storytelling image is to get up high. I’ve worked with South Portland-based construction company H.B. Fleming for a few years, documenting some of their impressive projects throughout Maine and New Hampshire. The scope and scale of much of the work they do—building massive retaining walls and cofferdams, for example—are most apparent when viewed from above. In 2020 Fitzgerald Photo became a FAA-certified commercial drone operator. We’ve since been using drones for photography and video production for clients throughout New England. I’m happy to share some images from recent H.B. Fleming projects.
To most photographers—those whose focus is on people and portraits, certainly, but also those who specialize in structures, food and products on location—the subject is the star of the show.
Location-based photographers know that the unsung hero of any successful portrait is the environment behind and around the subjects. Often, the environment offers clues and context that tells the story better than the subject themselves can.
In short, your backgrounds matter more than just as a place to put behind your subject.
Give thought to the environment around your subjects as deeply as you think about your subjects. Make sure that anything that shows in the frame is there for a reason.
Editor’s Note: The following is a reprint from a peice written for a Maine Public Relations Council (MPRC) newsletter. It’s practical tips, relevant for all content creators, whether photographers or marketers.
One of my favorite photography-related quotes is from National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson. “If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.”
Richardson stood in front of plenty of interesting stuff during his long career.
With a decent digital camera (or an iPhone), standing shoulder to shoulder with Richardson—say, on one of his trips to Cuba, photographing a wedding—you and I both would come away with something we’d want to hang on our walls.
The problem is, most of the time, we’re not in Cuba. Instead, we’re working an awards ceremony in a dimly-lit ballroom. Rather than capturing a portrait of a campesino standing in a sugar cane field, we’re snagging a headshot of an unfortunate new hire in the spare conference room.
Your work may never end up on the pages of National Geographic. That doesn’t mean you can’t elevate your images to something you’re proud represents you and your brand. Here are a few tips that can help you improve your images, today, with the gear you already have.
Watch your backgrounds
Before clicking, do a visual check of your background. Is there a pole back there, looking like it’s growing out of your subject’s head? Analyze your backgrounds and then position yourself in order to clean them up.
Lose the horizon
Examine your images. Does the horizon line —the line separating the ground from the sky—appear right across the middle of your frame? Get rid of it by squatting down low and photographing at an upward angle. Or, get up on a chair and angle the lens down, until only the floor fills your frame. This trick can make your background simpler and cleaner and result in more interesting images.
Use the Rule of Thirds
Divide your frame into a grid of nine squares. Place your dominant subject in one of the the top, bottom or sides squares, creating visual tension and interest.
Go Outside
Make outdoor images during the “Golden Hour”—the magical time just after sunrise or before sunset—when the sun is low and the light horizontal. This warm-toned light will flatter any subject.
Turn off your Flash
Turn off your built-in camera flash. Find a location with sufficient ambient light, and use that light instead. Even after color-correction, your portraits will immediately look a thousand times better, I promise.
Headshot portraits are deceptively simple. A head-and-shoulder portrait done in a studio is a staple need for businesses small and large, for entrepreneurs, service professionals and actors, to name a few.
Lights, camera, background, subject.
Simple.
On the way to creating that perfect portrait—the one that represents your company, your brand or, simply, YOU—are intentional choices that ensure success, or failure.
Good is a given.
It’s not enough to have a great, high-quality headshot. Your portrait has to align with your goals, your industry and must take consideration of your client and audience expectations.
It’s about your face.
Specificaly, it’s about your mood, your energy and your vibe and how your eyes and face express that.
Great headshots convey a mood, a feeling, a sense of the person, in an instant. No distracting elements. This takes a proper mindset, some time, and a purposeful interaction with the camera as guided by a photographer.
That’s the hard, most critical part; but it’s not enough:
Background
Backgrounds should be simple as possible, so as to keep attention where it belongs: your face. Unlike an editorial or environmental portrait, the background doesn’t have to do any heavy lifting by providing contextual clues or storytelling elements. It just has to stay out of the way and allow you to be the star of the show.
Wardrobe
It’s not a clothing or product shoot, so keep your clothing simple and make sure it flatters your face instead of distracts from it. Simple lines, jewel tone colors. Stay away from patterns and trendy looks (unless, of course, that IS your brand). Keep it classic, keep it cool.
Lighting
Headshot lighting needs to be purposeful. Going for a commercial, fresh vibe? Perhaps something more dramatic? How about low-key and reflective? Lighting will get you there. Now, Lighting is a bit of a Diva and loves to call attention to itself with its flashy tricks. Don’t let it take over the process; it’s a support player here. Lighting is there to keep the focus on you, rather than on the super special cool lighting techniques. As with your backdround and wardrobe choices, lighitng must serve the story without becoming the story.
And the story, quite simply, is you.
We all know how it is to be judged by our worst moments. Our lowest, most vulnerable, or most unattractive times. We all have them, but they are not the sum of our experience. I think back to many things I’ve said—flippant comments, ignorant statements, off-the cuff remarks. Things I’m ashamed of, yet they don’t represent who I truly am. To be judged forever by that worst moment, frozen in time, like in a single photograph—that’s not truth. It’s a sentence.
We all deserve to be seen as whole beings: the accumulation of experience that make us unique. Evolving, fallible, prone to making mistakes and failure but with the capacity to grow, learn and do better.
We live in a visual culture. We’re bombarded with thousands of images a day. We usually don’t stop to think about the source of these images, or the motivations behind them.
It’s why I love the impactful power of the single image yet take seriously the responsibility the fallacy of presenting a single image as a final, eternal truth.
So today look beneath the visual clutter. Resist the urge to pass judgement. Question the motives of those who are presenting the images, and view it all in greater context.