These days everyone needs a great business portrait. Be it for social media profiles, your company website, speaking engagements, it is important to have a portrait that shows you at your best.

Most people are unaccustomed to having their portrait taken and have questions about how to prepare so they get the best results. The choices that you make will partially be determined by standards in your industry, what tone you wish the pictures to convey, what the setting will be, i.e. studio or outdoors, and how the portraits will be used.

Things to Consider Before Hiring a Portrait Photographer

1. How and where will the pictures be used?

2. What sort of background do I want for the pictures? - a studio setting, nature or the outdoors, an office or a home environment?

3. What tone do I want the portraits to convey?

How to Groom for Your Portrait Session

Grooming for Women

1. Hair: Plan to have your hair done the morning of, or the day before, the photo session. This can include a cut, a dye job, a wash and blow out, or all of them. Being happy with how your hair looks is a big part of being happy with the final results.

2. Make-Up: Option 1: Consider having your make-up professionally applied. Hiring a make-up stylist that comes to the photo shoot prior to your session to apply your make-up and style your hair is one way to go.  I highly recommend this option as it improves the results enormously and how happy you are with the way you look. Option 2: Another, more economical make-up option is to have your make-up done at a department store counter. Tell the stylist that you are having your portrait shot. They should know what is best. Often the make-up application is free and they hope you will buy one or more of the products. Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy's and others will make appointments for this service. If you go with option 2, have your hair done before going to your make-up appointment. This way, when you walk out of the department store you can head directly to your portrait session.

Grooming for Men

1. Hair: Plan to have your hair cut the week of, or day before, or the morning of the photo session. This can include a cut, a shave or any grooming details needed. This is a good time to see if nose or ear hair are in check. Being happy with how your hair looks is a big part of being happy with the final results.

2. Make-Up: While most men don't usually wear any make-up, having a make-up stylist on the set of the photo shoot makes a huge difference in the results. The stylist will do grooming touch ups, cover any blemishes, deal with shiny skin, trim a mustache or beard and overall make you look great. You would truly be surprised how much this helps.

What to Wear for Your Business Portrait

Accessories & Eyewear

1. Eyeglasses: Decide if you want to be wearing your glasses in your portrait. If you are known for wearing them all the time then it might be a good idea to do so for your portraits as that is how people see you. Doing a combination of some with glasses and some without gives a nice variety of shots to choose from.

If you have a pair of glasses with non-reflective lens, bring them to the shoot.  Bring a selection of frames if you can.

2. Jewelry: Let your industry and what tone you want to set be the guide for what jewelry you might wear. When in doubt, keep it simple, elegant and timeless.

Clothing

1. For both men and women, choose business attire - whatever that means for your industry. This can be casual or dressier.

2. Bring at least 2 “looks”. For men bring 2-3 long sleeved business shirts, business jackets and tie options so we have a few styles and colors from which to select. For women – V-neck or scooped neckline tops work well with a jacket. Solids or very minimal / subtle patterns work best to keep the focus on your face. Bring both light and dark options. Be sure the clothing is as new as possible (not faded or over washed), or has recently been cleaned, has no frays, piling or lint visible.

The Final Results

If you follow these preparation suggestions, the quantity of image choices will be greater. You will be much happier with the outcome and will use the pictures more often and for longer. Going the extra mile to make the images their best will give you the best value for your time and money invested.

Visit my professional business portraits and headshot portfolios to get ideas for how you might approach your portrait session! I am always happy to discuss ideas on how to best approach a portrait shoot with you. Please feel free to give me a call at 415-640-7506.

A beautifully propped shot with just the right amount of staging by interior designer Grant K Gibson.

I often work with interior designers, photographing their design projects for their websites, for magazine publication, and for their company marketing. Depending on where they are in their career, they may not have had a design project professionally shot so I get asked how to best prepare for a successful and productive shoot. I share here my recommendations on things to consider before and the day of an interiors shoot.

Prepping before the shoot:

1. It is best to schedule the shoot on a day when the client will not be home. Doing this allows everyone involved to focus on the project and not be distracted by client questions, children running through the set etc. It keeps everything moving and allows me to get more shots done in a day and collaborate with you on each shot.

2. Create a shot list of which rooms will be shot and how many images you hope to get of each room. Are they overview, vignettes or detail shots? What angles appeal to you? Depending on many variables, including wall colors, lighting in the room and the color temperatures, window light and more, determines how quickly we can move through the spaces. I can take anywhere from 6-12 shots in half a day and 20-30 in a full day shoot.

3. How will the rooms be styled? Think about how you want to style the rooms. I suggest you consider the following as props:  fresh flowers, plants, artwork, accessories, books, and food. You may not want the clients artwork in the shots if it is something you did not select so consider renting artwork for the shoot. Bring a variety of flowers so that there are a selection to choose from and that the flowers in the shots change from set up to set up. If you don't bring enough, it can look odd to keep moving the same arrangement from room to room. Consider cupcakes, a fun pastry or cake, stylish packaging for kitchen food items, and elegant soap, sea sponges etc. for bathroom shots.

4. Consider doing a walk through with the photographer prior to the shoot day. This will allow you to decide on the order the rooms will be shot in and allow me, as the photographer, to consider the lighting conditions, tight angles etc. It will also allow you to consider if there are heavy items that will need to be moved. This will allow you time to hire help to move these items, if necessary.

5. Property Releases - Get one signed before the shoot day! To protect your business from future liability issues I always advise my clients to be sure their clients understand that the images we are taking are for both the designers and my portfolio. In addition, the images created could be published in a magazine or elsewhere. I always reassure them that the client's name and address will not be used, unless they want them to be, so their privacy is respected. Be sure to have this important conversation with your client before the shoot.

The day of the shoot

1. Get your props to the location early. Consider dropping them off the afternoon before or getting to the shoot before I arrive and figure out where to place them so they won't interfere with the rooms we are shooting. It will be a hassle for you and your assistant to have to keep moving the items if they are in a shot and you don't want them there.

2. Work one room ahead of the photographer. Ideally, if you get to the shoot a bit early, you can style the first shot and remove any clutter or items you don't want in the shot. This allows you to start working on the next room while I am shooting the first one.

3. We all need to eat! Everything goes better when you, your assistant and the crew are not hungry so allow time to order food and stop to eat lunch.

4. Leave some of the flowers for the client. This nice gesture always builds goodwill for the inconvenience of having us there and thanks them for allowing us to shoot!

I am sure I will have other ideas to share with you in a future post as they come up. Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments section!

Explore my interiors photography portfolio to see more examples of well propped and styled interiors.