I was recently commissioned to photograph corporate headshots for an investment company called BGF, based in Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin. BGF is an established, independent investment company, with a balance sheet of more than £2.5bn supporting earlier stage and established private businesses, and smaller listed companies. They have 16 offices in the UK and Ireland and invest across all regions and industry sectors, backing founders and management teams who are powering the future of the economy. BGF was set up in 2011 to address the chronic and longstanding shortage of funding available to Britain and Ireland’s small and mid-sized firms, and to inspire a generation of entrepreneurs largely overlooked or insufficiently supported by the investment community. Their aim was to create a large and broadly-based equity investment firm that could support these companies on a local basis as a minority and long-term partner, helping to drive growth and returns, building scale in a sustainable way. This particular part of Dublin is a business heartland many companies have offices and headquarter located in the area. Fitzwilliam Square is a Georgian garden square in the south of central Dublin, Ireland. It was the last of the five Georgian squares in Dublin to be built, and is the smallest. In Ireland BGF offices are in Dublin and Cork, for this particular headshot session I was located in their Dublin office on Fitzwilliam Square. In total I had seven people to be photographed which were to be done prior to a board meeting. I basically had an hour to complete the headshots as there were scheduled zoom calls which could not be delayed. The location was a stunning environment and decorated exquisitely more akin to a comfortable home as opposed to a sterile office environment. However this presented one or two problems in terms of space but after a few mins of furniture removal I managed to clear a space to allow me to setup my mini photo studio. As always time is money and everybody that was to involved arrived on time and had their headshots done quickly and efficiently with minimum fuss and disruption. However even though time was not really on my side I always want to prevent the scenario arising where it becomes a case of shooting fish in a barrel. I find that if I don’t allow myself to get caught up in the idea that this needs to done quickly this allows the person in front of my camera to also calm for the period of time I need them. If I am calm and working calmly this also has a knock on effect also and usually results in the best headshots. I always want to give the subject the best selection possible in the time allowed and simply by varying the frame of the image and photographing both left and right sides of the person along with jacket on and off can result in a good selection in a short space of time. By getting the subject to take their jacket off also has the effect of slowing and calming them particularly if they came to the session in a rushed state. With headshot sessions you do not have the luxury of moving lights usually and they are in fixed position of camera left for key light, and edge light camera right with a background light for a gradient on the background. Moving the subject left or right with the key light in the position mentioned will give you the option of short light and broad lighting.

This corporate headshot session in Dublin for BGF when smoothly and the client was delighted with the supplied headshots.