How do you shoot 100 staff portraits in 3 days? Have an amazing team behind you in a great location! Here's how I put together the staff shots for the guys at Jerram Falkus.
(Falkus Joinery team shot)
I have been taking staff portraits for many years now and so I understand the importance of getting it right. Having the perfect photos of your team is a wonderful way to introduce them to new customers; it can mean the difference between that person choosing you or one of your competitors. By hiring an experienced professional like myself I can guarantee that you'll end up with portraits reflect that the impression you would like to give your prospective clients. When Jerram Falkus approached me last year with the opportunity to reshoot their staff portraits including their in-house joinery team (Falkus Joinery) I was happy to oblige, as their team's warm attitude and passion for the job was clear from my first meeting.
Jerram Falkus is a family-run construction company based in Shoreditch and established over 135 years ago, providing bespoke construction and joinery services to every sector of the industry in and around London. Even though they are a large and well established business you could really feel that they cared for and were proud of all of their employees, and these staff portraits were an important way of showing them off.
To shoot over 100 staff portraits in 3 days needs great organisation and a fantastic location, thankfully both of these fell right into place! For our location we chose White Rabbit Studios. Based in a converted Victorian railway arch in East London with over 10000 square foot (929.03 m²) of studio space, White Rabbit Studios served our purpose perfectly. And when the guys at JF saw the feature wall of exposed brickwork they knew that would fit the business' aesthetic down to a tee. Also being based in the heart of Shoreditch meant that they guys didn't have to down tools for too long in order to come and get their photo taken, as they were walking distance from the studio.
(White Rabbit Studios)
In terms of organisation I was very fortunate to have Marketing Manager Natalya Tonkins helping me out. Tim Jobling was my Digital assistant on the Mac over the 3 days....great as always. While Natalya was amazing at organising and timetabling all the JF team to make sure everyone was in the right place at the right time!
The photo shoot was put together to coincide with the launch of the new website for Jerram Falkus and the staff portraits were going to take pride of place in their 'Meet the Team' section.
So it was really important to best reflect all the individuals from every department, be it managing directors (Johnathan Jerram above), site staff or the joinery team as these are the people you are going to entrust with your construction. I believe we pulled it off! The client was extremely happy with the results and their new website launched back in February and you can see the results here.
When putting together a shoot of this size it is vital to get your organisation right and I couldn't have done it without the help of the aforementioned Tim and Natalaya, they did an incredible job of keeping things ticking along on time. So a big thank you to them.
Thanks also to all the staff at White Rabbit Studios . I can highly recommend them. They're so easy to work with and everything is on hand to ensure that the job gets done. Plus their lunch menu is delicious!
This is the 'Wrap shot!' Featuring the props that we used for the Joinery Team shots....Tim Jobling on the left with Natalya Tonkins on the right.
If you would like me to shoot your next staff portraits please feel free to get in touch below and let's have a chat about your next project!