Social distancing for interior corporate headshots
Thankfully, It’s starting to feel like we’re getting back into the swing of things now that we’re permitted to shoot indoors again, after a month of only being able to shoot outside, as lockdown measures have been further relaxed.
For my first shoot back in a client’s offices, I was delighted to be invited up to the new offices of Concise Media Consulting in Soho to shoot portraits for their growing team. Despite the business challenges that so many of us have faced during this time, it’s great to see Concise going from strength to strength, still winning contracts in the hugely competitive world of media assurance and consultancy, when so many other companies have had their businesses effectively stalled. So it felt like the right time to be pushing ahead with their rebranding and website redesign, of which the portrait shoot was a significant component, ready to hit the ground running for a full relaunch as we all start to move forward again.
And given how new this experience is for us all, I thought I’d share a few learnings from the day on ensuring a successful shoot under the current conditions.
Location
Concise’s Founder & CEO, Kevin Waller, and I had a long chat about the pros and cons of doing the shoot, and how to ensure his whole team felt safe and protected; it would actually be the first time that they had seen the new office space, so although everyone was excited to do that, there was also some understandable uncertainty about how it would all work.
Fortunately, since their new headquarters are located the heart of London - an eerily quiet Newman Street in Soho - space was the least of our worries, as most of the other companies in their building still seemed to be on furlough, and we pretty much had our pick of the wide variety of areas available.
The ideal minimum space requirement that I normally request from clients is around 5m x 3m, cleared of all furniture, and the fact that we ended up working in a space around three times that size played a huge role in ensuring that everyone felt comfortable.
Moving forward, with rigorous working practices around scheduling and hygiene, I think shooting in considerably smaller spaces will become commonplace again, but it was great to have the luxury of working in such a large area on our first shoot back inside.
2. Scheduling
It’ll be interesting to see how working practices adapt over the coming months, and whether getting whole companies together in the same office spaces is going to become the exception rather than the norm. But whatever happens, I think it’s probably going to be a little while yet before we’re likely to be able get back to the days of shooting much more than 50 or 60 people in a day, if only because of the need to reassure clients that it can be done safely.
At Concise, we decided to play it as safe as possible. Although I would normally expect to shoot a team of 14 within 3 hours at the very most, we decided to err on the side of caution and limit the sessions to one person every half hour to ensure a minimum of people in close proximity at any given time, which meant that we were shooting pretty much over the course of a full day, including set-up and take-down time.
Whilst this was almost certainly over-cautious, there was also the consideration that Zoom was the closest the team had got to each other in the last 3 months, so we knew that there would inevitably be some overlaps where people wanted to get together for a chat, and being able to do that in at a safe distance in a suitable space also certainly contributed to the positive atmosphere of the day.
3. Distancing
Fortunately, my go-to lens for portraits is an 85 mm prime which naturally puts me at least 2m away from my subjects, even when I’m shooting fairly tight head and shoulders shots.
Kevin was very keen that the portraits for the new website should feel as distinctive as possible from the competition in a sector - media auditing - that can be seen as quite formal and old-fashioned; so we decided to move away from a more traditional head and shoulders approach, and agreed on quarter length portraits shot in a modern magazine editorial style, which also meant that I actually ended up being well over 4m away from my subjects.
I also always shoot tethered to a laptop monitor for all my portrait sessions, regardless of whether it’s for a longer individual session in the studio to help my clients review a range of looks, or on location at a client’s offices, where I’m shooting high volumes of staff, all of whom are given the opportunity to check out and approve their images on-screen.
And remote viewing is obviously ideal in a social distancing context; it avoids clients being tempted to try to review their images up close to me on the LCD screen on the back of the camera (which rarely gives them a genuine sense of how their pictures look anyway), and if anyone wants to run through a range of images themselves, the laptop keyboard can be quickly and easily disinfected between sessions, by any number of ethanol / alcohol based aerosols, pump sprays or wipes out there that are designed for the job.
For any of the photographers out there who follow this blog, all the other equipment used in the set up here is detailed on another blog post , apart from the Westcott Eyelighter which is great for giving an even spread of light to lift any shadows from below, and which creates a catchlight that complements the curve of the iris, and the custom-painted canvas backdrop from Artery Backdrops which I cannot recommend highly enough - they’re absolutely beautiful.
4. Interacting
Although it looks like ‘Namaste’s and elbow bumps are the most physical we’re likely to be getting during meet and greets with clients for a while, the one thing that really hasn’t changed at all is the way we interact during the shoot itself.
Some people seem to magically forget how to move naturally the moment they step in front of a camera, becoming extremely wooden and self-conscious, and it can be tempting to physically move them as the quickest way to show them what you’re looking for.
But, quite apart from compromising social distancing requirements, taking that approach can also easily interrupt the flow of the shoot. I therefore always make a point of running through some basic mirroring techniques at the outset of any session, so that clients can follow an easy set of hand gestures to manoeuvre them into the right position whilst still keeping them fully engaged in the shoot, especially importantly nowadays, so that I don’t have to move too far away from the camera or towards them.
5. Hygiene
One question that seems to have been generating a lot of debate amongst photographers since we were able to start shooting again, is whether or not we should wear face masks when working with clients. It’s a particularly salient issue for portrait photographers, given that verbal communication is such a fundamental part of any photo shoot, from basic direction through to demonstrating facial expressions that you would like your sitters to make, which wearing a face making would obviously seriously inhibit.
As yet, there haven’t been any definitive guidelines issued on this for photographers specifically, leaving us to use our discretion within the general parameters provided. Personally, I think shoots can be conducted safely without my wearing a mask, as long as the type of measures outlined above are strictly adhered to.
Having said that, I think it’s also really important to be sensitive to potentially different points of view and to anyone who might feel uncomfortable about me not wearing a mask, so I took along a box of disposable surgical masks and offered everyone the option of me wearing one, and so that they were able to wear one if they wanted whilst they weren’t in front of the camera. As it turned out, everyone felt sufficiently comfortable that the box remained unopened, but I think providing the option was absolutely the right thing to do.
Given that there wasn’t any need for anyone apart to touch any of the lighting equipment, I didn’t feel that it was strictly necessary to disinfect everything between sessions, although I had plenty of disinfectant spray and individual bottles of hand santising gel standing by if they were needed.
So all in all, a really interesting experience and, for me, hugely encouraging as a case study to be able to share with clients who have any nervousness around commissioning headshot sessions at their offices. Thankfully it was also a big thumbs up from the Concise team, who very kindly said they enjoyed it as a bonding experience as much as anything else. And based on our day together, I think I can say with some degree of confidence that it’s looking like the new normal shouldn’t actually be a million miles away from the old one!
Huge thanks to friend and fellow photographer Heather Shuker of The Image Maker who shot the behind the scenes imagery and video footage below that so brilliantly captures the spirit of the day.