Corporate Portrait Series

My client, Hahn & Hahn Law, was redesigning their company website and branding, so they asked me to create a series of portraits revealing their attorney’s personalities. They did not want the typical corporate headshots, so I showed them some images on my website for inspiration, discussed the options for portraiture, and then settled on a look and plan to create this series of portraits.

They were careful the pictures did not too rock and roll but in the end, we created a portrait series that people liked very much.

I planned to pose evocative questions to each attorney and push them past their comfort zone so I could find moments in between the questions when they were slightly off-guard to find authentic moments. Additionally, I used humor, stories, and social skills to find those revealing moments when they forgot for a moment, they were sitting for a portrait. Everyone was different and I had to respond to them appropriately. We photographed everyone standing and seated; some on stools and others in chairs and at the end of each 30-minute session we had a great selection of images.

Corporate Portrait Process

For this series of portraits, I used a beauty dish for the key lighting and a large 4x8 reflector on a C-stand to reduce dark shadows. There were two strobe lights on the 9 ft. seamless to give me a clean white background and a clean modern look which is not very uncommon in the world of conservative law firms. I had a seasoned assistant to help with the setup and we shot to a laptop where we could show the portraits to the client and record everyone’s names on each file.

Our lens of choice was a 24-70mm lens and our cameras were Nikon Z9s. We hung a black floppy over their heads to reduce light scatter and a second one behind me to give our subjects a bit of privacy. Additionally, we took direction from the client.