Story of Two Corporate Backgounds
Well, so this week we followed up on a nice shoot we had at the beginning of the year for a really fun company named Moneygram. My associate and I shot a bunch of their executives at an Irving hotel meeting. Having a professional headshot photographer available for this type of stuff is great for companies like Moneygram and others as they can flesh out their archives and get plenty of backup for future use. They use these photos for all kinds of things. Brochures. Public Relations. Corporate Communications purposes and so on and so forth. When we arrived at the hotel to shoot these headshots we were asked to shoot them with an environmental background. The hotel lobby was small and cramped and since there was a lot of traffic we had to settle on a large painting which we threw out of focus. The headshots turned out fantastic. The company was happy with them. I was happy with them. But when they called on us to shoot a similar meeting that was going to take place in their corporate office we had to decide what to do about the background. This brings us to a few options, dear client and fellow photographers (I turned off comments so if you have any email me and I will be glad to put them in a discussion fashion next post.) I am not a big fan of “cut and paste” and / or “green screens.” I don’t care how good you are, it still can look fake. If you think you want to go that route of course it is possible to just photograph a few of your own out of focus backgrounds and simply pop the folks on there. That way when you show them on the company website (especially side-by-side) you have consistency. We can go into how and when to do that in the next post. But for now lets assume that unless we can shoot a whole company’s headshots on location with the background we agree on to bring, I say go with something that can be used by any present / future / in-town or out-of-town photographer. We do this by using a nice, corporate and conservative paper background by Savage Background which any photographer / client can find here . I use “Thunder Gray # 27″ but you can choose one that fits your taste. Photographers can do this and communicate to the client down the line. Clients can do this and request the photographer pick one up for their shoot. The smaller rolls are only about $25 and are perfect for headshots. So, to wrap it up for now? If your company, or your client is starting from scratch but thinks they may have headshots in other towns, future turnover of employees _or_ photography services (LOL) remember a “Tale of Two Backgrounds” is like a “Tale of Two Cities.” You can match them up perfectly, inexpensively and with very little hassle. Next conversation we should talk about instructions to, or from your photographer on lighting, posing and etc. to make your companies headshots match from town to town, and / or if you feel you have to cut and paste some of the things to make that go well.
