How a Corporate Headshot Day Works

If you're the person responsible for getting your whole team photographed, you have a short list of real questions: How long will this take? Will the images look consistent, a set that fits your organization's branded look? What do you need from us? What happens when someone can't make their slot? This page answers all of them. It's the actual mechanics of a full-day corporate session, not a sales pitch.

I'm Damon Bates. In addition to photographing leadership teams, I've also spent 35 years as a sales and marketing executive and leadership consultant (which is how some clients came to call me The Executive Photographer), so I understand both sides of this: the joys and challenges of leading and managing a team, and what it takes to help each person relax and look genuinely like themselves in the few minutes they're in front of the camera. My studio is in the Boston area, and we travel on-site to companies throughout Massachusetts and nationally for leadership teams and boards. Looking for a single corporate headshot in Boston for yourself rather than a full team day? That session is covered here.

How Many People We Can Photograph in a Day

Each person is photographed in about ten minutes, with a catch-up slot after every four people so the day stays on time. Starting at 9:00, with a lunch break in the middle, a single day comfortably handles a team of about 37 people, finishing around 5:10 PM, without rushing anyone. Above that, we add a second day rather than compress the pace. A team of 60 becomes a two-day session, and very large groups can be handled with more days or a second setup.

We could move faster. We choose not to. Those few extra minutes per person are where the coaching happens: the brief bit of connection that lets someone relax and actually look like themselves. A rushed session shows in the final image; the difference between a photo someone endured and one where they look relaxed and confident is almost always time. If you're evaluating a photographer promising a hundred faces an hour, that is worth pausing on.

How Headshot Day Works

1. 1

   Before the shoot

   • You designate a site coordinator, who is our contact and your team's point of contact.
   • Your coordinator gets a private portal with a ready-to-send invitation. It opens in their mail app already written, so they add the team's addresses and send it.
   • Each person picks their own ten-minute time. There is no schedule to build, and the system does the nudging.
   • A live roster shows who has booked and who still needs to. The system follows up with anyone who hasn't, and your coordinator can nudge someone with one click.
   • Each person gets their own portal with their session time and wardrobe guidance, plus a calendar invitation, and can move their own time if their day changes.

   your company logo

   Your Company Headshot Day

   Your date · 10 min each

   Bookmark this page. It’s how you get back in.

   9:00 AMEmily R.9:10 AMAlex Rivera9:20 AMPriya Shah9:30 AMJordan Lee

   9:40 AMcatch-up buffer

   9:50 AMSam Walker10:00 AMTaylor Brooks

   10:10 AMopen

   10:20 AMopen

   10:30 AMcatch-up buffer

   10:40 AMopen

   10:50 AMopen

   Sample coordinator portal showing a live roster of booked and open ten-minute headshot times

   

   Emily R.’s Headshot Portal

   Your Company

   Scheduling

   You’re booked

   Your headshot day

   9:00 AM

   Your office

   Need a different time?

   Pick any open time and we’ll move you.

   10:10 AM10:20 AM10:40 AM10:50 AM11:00 AM11:10 AM

   Move my time

   Please arrive five minutes before your scheduled time. Your session runs 10 minutes, coached start to finish. We shoot tethered to a computer and review the images together as we go. You’ll see what’s working and can adjust on the spot.

   Pre-session guidance and prep

   What to sort out before the day, all of it from your confirmation email, kept here so you don’t have to go looking for it.

   Wardrobe ›

   Neutral colors photograph best. Skip busy prints, bold patterns, scarves, ruffles, and fringe. A white shirt works under a jacket, but not on its own. It reflects too much light and washes out skin tones. Crisp, newer fabric drapes better than something well worn.

   Jewelry ›

   Keep it minimal, so the focus stays on your face.

   Glasses ›

   We may shoot with and without them. Wear antireflective lenses if you have them, and give them a good clean beforehand.

   Grooming, hair, and makeup ›

   Men: a clean shave or neatly trimmed facial hair and a little moisturizer is all you need. No makeup. Women: your light everyday makeup photographs well, nothing heavier. Bring your usual lip color if you wear one, and a hairbrush for touch-ups.

   Sample participant portal for one team member, with the company logo, their booked time and place, and the pre-session guidance on wardrobe, jewelry, glasses, and grooming

2. 2

   The day of the shoot

   Setup

   8:00 AM

   First session

   9:00 AM

   Wrap, lunch included

   about 5:10 PM

   A full day, about 37 people.

   • We arrive an hour before the first session and build a full studio: professional lighting, a gray studio backdrop or your office as the background, and a tethered display.
   • Each person is photographed in about ten minutes. I coach everyone through expression and posture, so the person in the picture is the same one who walks into the room.
   • People watch their images appear on the display as we work, and they choose their favorite before they head back to their desk.
   • A catch-up slot after every four sessions keeps the day running on time.
3. 3

   After the shoot

   • Retouched images are ready within 10 business days and are delivered once the final balance is paid.
   • Each person gets a private page with their images already cropped for where they will use them: website and company page, team page and bio, social profiles, email signature, and print.
   • Your coordinator receives the full set, as a backup and to forward to your creative services team for website updates.

   

   Emily R.’s Headshot Portal

   Your Company

   Scheduling▾

   Pre-session guidance and prep▾

   Image delivery

   Your finished image is ready, each in five crops and resolutions to cover nearly all of your digital imaging needs. Click any tile to download that file, sized and named for where it goes.

   Download all images

   Image 1

   • Your website, press, company pageLandscape orientation · 4:3 · 2048pxDownload ↓
   • Team page, bio, speaker pagePortrait orientation · 4:5 · 2048pxDownload ↓
   • Social profiles and avatarsSquare · 2048px · also Teams, Zoom, company directoryDownload ↓
   • Email signatureSquare · 300px, small fileDownload ↓
   • Print and press5000 × 3750 · 300 DPI · original color profile kept for offset printingDownload ↓

   Download all images

   One zip with every size of every image. Please download your images now. This link will be active for 30 days.

   Sample participant portal after the shoot, with scheduling and the pre-session guidance folded away and the image delivery section open: one finished executive headshot in five labeled crops, website, team page and bio, social profiles, email signature, and print, each ready to download

On wardrobe, each person's portal carries our guidance, and you can also point your team to our headshot-day prep guide. We'll straighten a collar or flag anything that won't photograph well, but what each person shows up wearing is owned by the coordinator and the subject.

How We Keep the Images Consistent

Often for my clients, their single biggest concern with a large team is consistency: that the first person and the fiftieth won't look like they belong to the same set. Here is exactly how we hold the look together:

• The lighting and background are locked down. The setup doesn't change from the first person to the last, or from hour to hour.
• Same camera settings, tethered to a computer. Every frame is captured identically and monitored live on-screen as we shoot, so nothing drifts.
• A final post-processing pass. After everyone is photographed, we retouch the full set together, with color grading and whatever cleanup is needed so the images look consistent from a finished standpoint, not just as they came out of the camera.

The result is a consistent set of images: a team page, a LinkedIn lineup, and company materials with a unified, branded look that fits your organization, on your website and everywhere else the photos appear.

That consistency also holds over time. Anyone you hire next week or next year can be photographed through our New Hire Program with the same lighting and the same background, so they slot onto your team page with the same finished look, whether someone was photographed the day of or a year later. You never have to coordinate another group photo day unless you want to.

Facility Requirements

• Space: about a 10-foot-by-10-foot unobstructed area. A conference room works well, provided the table can actually be moved aside to clear that space. (Some larger conference tables are fixed or too heavy to shift, so it's worth confirming in advance.) A lobby corner or any open area works just as well.
• Power: a standard 15-amp circuit is generally plenty.
• Lighting: ideally the overhead lights in that area can be turned off, or at least dimmed, so our studio lighting isn't competing with the building's fluorescents.
• Setup time: we arrive about an hour before the first session to build the full studio, so we're ready to photograph the first person right on schedule.
• Access: if the space is above the ground floor, we need elevator access, since we arrive with a full studio's worth of lighting and cases.

New Hires and Anyone Who Misses the Day

Teams grow, and a few people are always out sick or traveling on the day. So the session isn't a one-shot deal. Through our New Hire Program, anyone who misses it, or joins the company later, can come to the studio for a headshot at a new-hire rate of $250 per person, photographed with the same lighting and background so their image is consistent with the rest of the team. Your directory stays consistent as you hire, without booking a whole new team day every time.