portraits

Portraits that mean business

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Q: What’s the difference between an Executive Portrait and a Business Portrait?

A: About $500.   (It’s an old joke but sometimes it’s true. Read on.)

Business Portrait:

This is usually a head-and-shoulders photo against a plain background. Eye contact with the camera is important and a bit of a smile never hurts. A plain background, while not absolutely necessary, won’t distract the viewer. It’s also easy for any other photographer to duplicate a plain background in any future business portraits of other employees, should the need arise.

This type of portrait should never look like a passport picture, a driver’s license photo or a family snapshot. On the other hand, depending on the company, a business portrait doesn’t have to be a serious suit-and-tie picture.
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Photo License Is Common Sense

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Got a phone call from a business, here in Toronto, looking to hire a photographer. The caller said that they’ve never hired a photographer before and admitted they weren’t sure “how it works.”

The company wanted executive portraits for its web site. Business portraits are the most common request that a corporate photographer gets. There are many uses for such pictures and smart businesses like to update their photos every couple of years or so.

I suggested the best way to do the photography, how the pictures could be delivered and then gave an approximate cost for the required usage. That last bit, about the price depending on the usage, caught the caller by surprise.

Aha! Licensing.

 

Here’s the deal about licensing:

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Picture Yourself

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If you’re a business person, especially in a smaller company, then you should be aware of the value of a business portrait. Larger companies, for better or worse (and it’s mostly worse), tend to photograph only their C-level people.

Here’s a link to a UK marketing expert’s blog, with a post about the importance of a business portrait to your branding:

A few years ago, I hired a professional photographer to take my picture. It didn’t cost much (£200, I think) but I think it was the best marketing investment I have made.

‘Nuff said?

Six months ago, I got a call from a medium-sized, business management consulting company in Toronto. They wanted portraits of their top executives, mostly for use on their web site. I quoted about $2,000 for business portraits and they never called back. To this day, the “About Us” page on that company’s six-year-old web site is still empty except for a list of executive names. I guess they couldn’t find a cheap-enough photographer.

Point is, it’s penny-wise but pound-foolish to treat a rather important marketing tool as a cheap commodity. A good, and even unique, portrait is an important marketing investment. This is one of those things that are worth more than what they cost.

A business portrait can be a simple and quick head-and-shoulders headshot. It can also be two hours of photography resulting in a variety of images with various poses, locations and lighting styles. It all depends on you and your business. Talk to your photographer about the possibilities.

 

Say Cheese

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Who doesn’t love having their picture taken?

First Portraits

Getting your “official” portrait taken usually starts when you’re one day old, courtesy of the hospital photographer.

This is followed by thirteen years of annual school pictures. Although some grade schools now have “picture day” three times per year.

If you played sports or were involved in any other organized activity when you were young, then you probably had many more official pictures.

When you add graduation and prom pictures, driver’s licence photos, passport pictures and maybe even a few police mug shots :-) then you’ve had a lot of official portraits made. Many of those probably had fake, forced smiles.
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