Why would the people in your company be any different?
In advertising, you can spend hours exploring an idea and staging it. Forty people on set for a bag of sweets or a box of cheese. But when it comes to showing the people who actually run a company, we often assume a selfie taken at the corner of a desk will do. If advertising spends that much on the details of an image, it is because we are all highly sensitive to them, often without knowing it. Willis and Todorov, Psychological Science, Princeton University, 2006: the judgment formed from a hundred-millisecond glance at a face is almost identical to the one formed with no time limit at all. The brain looks, sorts and decides before it has read a single line.
Preparation is the whole job
Everything shows in a photograph. Before I pick up the camera, I take the time to understand what the session is for, what is expected of it, how the images will be used, and where the company stands on its own image. There is what gets said clearly, and what does not get said but matters just as much: the mood we are trying to create. Good preparation is what makes the difference in the final result.
However long it takes to ring true
Everyone needs their own time to settle. Some are ready in ten minutes, others need longer. What we are after is a portrait that is true and not timid, one that says something about the company and the people in it. My experience mostly helps me start the conversation and understand what people dislike about themselves. Not this angle, not my smile, not my arms. We all carry a few of those, usually without good reason, and they are worked through with time, not against it.
An image you recognise
I deliver a contact sheet with two or three options per person, depending on budget and deadline, sometimes more for an executive whose image will be more exposed. What matters to me is that the company does not end up looking like its neighbour, or worse, its competitor. Put the company’s logo on one of these photographs and you should recognise it straight away: the light, the setting, the poses, the details say who it is. Once the selection is made and the uses confirmed, print, web, social, I send the final files quickly.
It is what I hear most often, and almost always before we have even started. Frankly, that is not the point. The question is what you have to say. That is what makes a good picture, not a square jaw.
How long does it take? Twenty minutes for a good portrait. Less if the person stops trying to pull a good face. That is usually my first battle.
In a factory, a workshop, a laboratory, I almost always meet people who are attached to their company in a way you would not suspect from the outside. The work is not always easy. The warmth is there all the same, almost every time.
That is what I try to make visible. And it is why I still love doing this.