Today I got a request from a small company to take a group photo. They said their team had changed and they needed an updated photo of their seven employees.
But then came the odd part. The email specified that everyone needed to stand in a single row, evenly spaced, with no one overlapping.
I asked why they wanted such a specific setup.
“We use the group picture to get headshots of everyone,” they explained.
I replied that cropping headshots from a group photo wouldn’t produce good results. The lighting, pose, and camera angle wouldn’t be optimized for each person.
“We always do this,” the person wrote, “because it saves us a lot of money.”
Out of curiosity, I checked the website for this small law firm. Sure enough, it had a group photo with everyone spaced evenly apart in a wide row, like a police lineup. The headshots on the website were obviously cut from that same group photo.
Customers are free to crop a photo however they like. But I didn’t want to intentionally do a bad group photo so I declined the job.
Mugshot or Portrait
A business portrait or group photo should show your best side, not your thrifty side. Individual headshots are, well, individualized so each person looks their best.
Business photography shouldn’t just fill empty space on your website. It should communicate a message to your potential customers.
A driver’s license mugshot shows what you look like. A business portrait should show who you are.
Hi Warren:
Good on you for holding your ground. I’m left wondering if that law firm cares so little about the quality of their public image, what does it say about the quality of their work.
Hi Miguel,
Some businesses, both large and small, simply don’t value photography. To them, photos are an afterthought or even a nuisance. How often to you see a business web site that has either no pictures or maybe just a few cheap cliché stock pictures?
Small, older, family-run businesses tend to be traditional and conservative in how they operate, especially law firms.
By contrast, I did photos for a two-person property management company where the two people were in their early thirties. They were very aware of photography, (they hired me twice), and they had lots of pictures on their web site.
Some companies take advantage of photography to market their business and some companies simply don’t understand the value of photography.
Speaking of the value of photography, look at your conclusion: “I’m left wondering if that law firm cares so little about the quality of their public image, what does it say about the quality of their work.”
This is *exactly* the reaction everyone has when looking at a web site with poor quality photos. If they don’t care about their own business, will they care about me, the customer?
This is the very problem that business photography solves. Photography helps create a positive image of a business and helps build a sense of trust to draw customers in.