Team work makes the dream work
When meeting with team members, what does that look like?
Create visual assets of your team caught in the act during your portrait session.
During a recent headshot session, I was thrown a curveball.
While discussing timing and logistics to shoot a couple headshots with Tim, a member of the marketing and PR firm, Fight or Flight, and members of his team, he brought up something else.
In addition to updating the team page with newly minted headshots that we discussed during the strategy call, he also was interested in some lifestyle shots of the team together in order to replace some stock images scattered throughout the other website pages.
I was not only open to this session pivot, but I was more than happy to help.
Far be it from me to stand in the way of the creation of candid lifestyle portraits :)
After all, these types of visual assets hold a lot of creative flexibility with respect to their use for website imagery and online content.
Fortunately, since the team flew into NYC for a week of meetings, and were scheduled to fly out that day, they had all their clothing options already with them.
And, we were in Workhouse NYC, a co-working space that offered a variety of locations in which to capture these meetings.
But, before we started shooting, we had an impromptu strategy session in order to flesh out what genuine meetings would look like:
Who attends the meetings?
What technology is involved?
What is being discussed?
How are team members taking notes?
Once we established the basics - and knocked out photographing the headshots and team photos - we spent the rest of our time together creating candid lifestyle portraits of them working together as a team.
First up was capturing photos of an actual virtual call with the European division of the company:
Once that call wrapped, we then moved onto creating assets from the scenarios uncovered during our freestyled, strategy session.
The team grabbed all of the props - laptops, pen and pads - required to make these photos feel genuine and real, brought their clothes with them, and we moved around the co-working space to create some visual variety:
At the end of the session, I flipped through the photos with Tim and he mentioned how much additional value these photos added to the experience.
While it’s not the typical way to prepare for a lifestyle portrait session, we were able to make it work, which ultimately reaped a valuable haul of image assets that can be used throughout their online presence.
And, it helps them toss out a large handful of stock photos that do nothing to create connection with their audiences.
With that said…
BEFORE you show up to a location with outfits and a plan in place, be sure to speak with your marketing team about what types of photo content is needed to help create a more valuable image content portfolio.
It might be more than just headshots.
That way, you can aptly prepare with your photographer to maximize your time together to produce these assets.
It’s a hell of a lot easier than asking folks to dive into their suitcases and scramble to put outfits together on the spot :)
For more visual storytelling strategies and insights for experts, I’ll talk your eyes off through my blog. Sign up to receive them directly in your inbox, and if you have any questions, set up a time to chat with me and then I’ll talk your ears off, too :)