West Yorkshire commercial photographer | corporate headshots | commercial portrait photographer Wakefield

West Yorkshire commercial photographer: corporate headshots for Roan Buildings Solutions

As a West Yorkshire commercial photographer it’s great to build up a relationship with clients and shoot on a regular basis for them. Today I was back on site at the Raon Buildings Solution office in Wakefield to shoot some corporate headshots of new starters and internal movers. The brief was to create some professional corporate headshots on a plain white background for use on the website, the same style as I have previously created for them, and then to shoot some groups shots of site managers outdoors. No need for elaborate backdrops, a simple white wall, two speedlights, a couple of radio triggers and a softbox and I’m good to go. I set up in a small conference room and pulled a table and chair in front of a narrow section of wall between the room corner and the window; tiny, but it was enough to give me a plain background, especially once I’d hit it with a bare light at 1/16 set low behind the subject. Once I had my background to the right level, I simply brought in another speedlight mounted with a 70cm softbox as key and shot at around 1/8 power to give me a good working aperture of around f/11. Once I had the chair and table in place it was just a matter of bringing the staff in one at a time and getting them to relax. The table acts as a comfort aid and the subject feels less exposed and tends to relax pretty much from the off.

Once I had the headshots in the can, I quickly changed the height of the lights so that I could get some shots of the guys in hard hats in a standing position and then we headed outside to brave the winds and cold for a group shot. Here I simply metered for ambient, dialled down the exposure then brought in a bare speedlight as a key light. In a matter of moments the shoot was over and I was able to pretty much present the images straight out of camera without any need for edits.