Open the “Our team” page on most company websites and you’ll see the same thing. The MD was shot in a studio against grey. The finance lead sent a cropped photo from a wedding. Two people are standing in front of the same office plant, but one was taken in the morning and one at 5pm, so they look like they work in different buildings.
None of these photos are bad on their own. They just don’t belong together, and that makes the whole company look a little less put together than it actually is.
Why it happens
Teams grow one hire at a time. Each new person gets photographed whenever someone remembers, by whoever is around, with whatever phone or camera is nearby. After three years you’ve got a page full of photos taken by six different people in six different places.
The fix isn’t complicated. It’s mostly about deciding a few things once and then sticking to them.
The four things that need to match
- The background. Plain grey, white, or a specific spot in your office. Pick one.
- The lighting. Same direction, same softness, same brightness on the face.
- The crop. Head and shoulders, or down to the waist. Eyes at roughly the same height in every frame.
- The clothing guide. Not a uniform, just a rule. Solid colours, no busy prints, jackets optional.
If those four line up, the photos will look like a set even if people’s expressions and poses are a bit different. That’s actually what you want. A set of identical robot poses looks stiff.
Do it in one day
We almost always recommend shooting the whole team in one go. Book a room in your office or come to us, set the lights once, and run people through in ten to fifteen minute slots. Most people are done before they’ve had time to get nervous.
Keep a note of the exact setup: the camera height, the light positions, the background, even the lens. When someone new joins in six months, you can recreate it and their photo will drop straight into the page without looking out of place. This is the bit most companies skip, and it’s why the page drifts again.
A few small things that help
Tell people the day before so they can plan what to wear. Have a mirror and a lint roller in the room, it’s amazing how often they get used. Shoot a few frames with a smile and a few without, and let people choose. And send the final images in a couple of sizes, square for LinkedIn and a wider crop for the website, so nobody has to crop them badly later.
If your team page could use a tidy up, our photography page has more on how we run headshot days, or you can drop us a message and we’ll work out a time that suits your team.
Header photo by Christian Buehner on Unsplash.
