It's Headshot Day - Covid Style!

The ball started rolling for us in the business headshot and professional portrait market in August and it has been a steady and solid Fall, work-wise, ever since. That is very good news for us, given that we are in an industry where every sector hit a massive 12 foot thick wall a few Marches ago.

We will not go as far as to say that the pandemic is under control, but we will admit that we are cautiously optimistic. Why? So many of our clients have figured out how to function safely. They have guidelines and rules in place that allow people to operate with protections in their places of business. They are being supported by vaccine requirements. People are wearing masks. Offices are at reduced capacity.

Here are some of the trends that our executive headshot photographers are seeing.

Thank Goodness for Vaccines

People are feeling confident in the power of the vaccines. Those who are vaccinated are not getting sick or nearly as sick.

There is no way for a corporate photographer to take a headshot when the subject is wearing a mask. When we ask them to get in front of the camera and remove their mask, they can feel far more confident that they are protected by their own vaccination status.

Clients are being so careful. They are following mandates as a baseline. Extra steps include, for example, closed campuses. This means that only those with ID's or that have pre-approved business in the building are allowed to enter.

These vaccination requirements are being taken quite seriously in New York, our home base and the surround areas. We are grateful that this key element of vaccinations is something that will help us get back to business as usual.

Masks, Masks, Masks

Call it overkill, given the vaccination rates among our clients, but with the delta variant still causing so much havoc, we are grateful that our clients are still feeling the value of this extra layer of protection.

Everyone is wearing and cooperating, as far as we can see. Obviously, for their online or LinkedIn headshot, the mask has to come off. But we are glad about the extra protection that masks bring to our shooting area while subjects wait. And we said it here first – masked professional headshots anyone? A real sign of the times, no?

Smaller Groups

We used to come to an office to cover employees for their business headshot. Or maybe a university to cover graduate or graduating students for their LinkedIn headshot. There would be crowds of people lining up. Sometimes it would be 20-30 people deep every second of the 6hrs we are shooting. People wanted their professional headshot.

This piece has changed dramatically. The events are smaller and we are taking phased and scheduled approaches to getting people their professional headshot photos.

We are doing our part to keep a more organized flow. With our clients, we are strongly advocating for scheduling individual sessions. Our scheduling tool is the simplest way to do this. We send the client a link to the schedule. They then distribute it to their staff or subjects. Each individual schedules their own time to have their corporate headshot session. This means that there is a steady and predictable flow of headshot clients coming into the room. No one is waiting in line for an hour to get their photo taken. They are scheduling their time, showing up a minute or two early, getting their photo and then exiting the area.

Easy breezy.

Not only are people in and out faster, the room where we shoot is never crowded. There are never more than 1 or 2 people waiting around, if that. It is only the photographer, an assistant, the current subject and sometimes the corporate headshot subject who is up next.

Spaced Out

The other factor that helps with less crowded spaces? A room that has a bit more... room. We are pushing for more open and roomy areas to shoot in and clients, whenever possible, are accommodating. Our ideal space has enough room for a photographer, an assistant and a subject to occupy the room with the magic 6' distance between everyone. If that can't happen we modify with safety being the first priority.

A few other things we are seeing...

Rooms are clean. We see professional crews coming through all the time wiping down tables, doorknobs, chairs, and anything else that people might be touching. There is hand sanitizer everywhere and surfaces wipes galore.

Now, we at The Booth are very familiar with the phrase, Hygiene Theater. But we operate in spaces that are shared by sometimes hundreds of others, where doors are touched by at least 20-30 people an hour, where the bathrooms might have 10 stalls. We believe the safest cleaning measure is to wash those hands (for a full 2 rounds of happy birthday, please). But when we are in NYC in high traffic and public areas, we are happy for the effort that the cleaning staff and our hosts make.

And for the best and most important part.... People are on board. Everyone wants their headshots done safely and in an organized way. Sure, the occasional mask might slip below the nose, but they are quick to adjust back to code. We have not seen anyone out of compliance as everyone we work with is comfortable with the safety guidelines, or at least willing to comply while we are working together..

We are so glad to be back shooting corporate headshots and business photography on the regular. We love seeing our people, meeting new folks and making great photography.

Restart - Booking Your New York Corporate Headshot Shoot

Our New York headshot photographers are ready to start taking your executive headshots and corporate portraits.

We are finding that our clients are ready to start thinking about projects long delayed by coronavirus. Thankfully for us, that includes getting their corporate headshots updated. New York and the surrounding areas have done the work to contain the virus and we are ready to carefully step back into our role as their New York corporate headshot photographers.

The way that we do things is a little different now with the goal being to keep you, your staff and our team safe.

Booking The Booth for Business.

Booking us is not much different. If you are looking to start a new corporate headshot project, start by giving us a call. We will talk to you about your needs, touching on how many people we are covering, what creative looks you are considering, background types, location, etc. If you are a client that was already booked, our conversation with you will act as an update. We will confirm details and find out if there have been any changes to the plan since we last spoke.

Space and Location For Your Corporate Headshots

For the foreseeable future we will be giving space and location quite a bit more consideration. Like in every public circumstance right now, we must maintain the minimum of 6 feet of distance between the photographer and his/her subject. We almost always come to the client's place of business (you), so one of our pre-shoot priorities would be to vet the location a little more thoroughly so we know we can set up properly for this distance.

Space and access will be the key factors we consider when we are sending our corporate headshot photographers out to setup a studio in your office. Ideally, the room would be 15 feet in at least one direction. This gives us space for our gear and our people to stay separate. We would also prefer a space where we can set up so the subject can walk into position without passing the photographer. Again, the less contact, the better!

What Does Your New York Corporate Headshot Photographer Want You To Wear?

Our recommendations on what to wear and how to prep are the same as pre-covid. Stick to solids and wear clothes that have a nice structure. Keep things as simple as possible. For one, it will highlight you and look nice in the photo. Also, there is less need to adjust well-fitting, uncomplicated outfits. In pre-Covid19 times, we would approach the subject and with his/her permission, and either direct or help them to adjust an item of clothing that might be laying wrong or hanging improperly. We can still direct our subjects, but the distance makes it more difficult.

The same is true for jewelry. Try to wear chains that don't tangle or earrings that hang properly without getting stuck in long hair. Again, the less you need to rely on our New York photographers for adjustments, the better.

Before you come into the room for your shoot, stop and look in a mirror. You have already taken precautions with your outfit and accessories for the day. Now do a last minute check:

-smooth down stray hairs with a hair product or, in a pinch, with hands lightly coated with lotion.

-if wearing a necklace, check that the clasp is in the back and that any charms are hanging straight.

-if wearing earrings, make sure they are arranged and hanging properly.

-check that your collar is folded neatly.

-neatly tuck shirts.

-check for exposed undergarments (bra straps especially).

Pre-shoot Timing

For the time being, we are strongly encouraging clients to use our scheduling tool. This will give each subject a designated 10 or 15 minute window, for example. We will time our work in an effort to clear the room of one subject before the next one comes. Here is a link to how our scheduling tool works.

Finally, the images will all be viewed and delivered digitally. We will send a password-protected gallery to the client with all of the download-able images. Our goal is always to get photos to our clients within 3 days of the shoot, but, of course, this depends on the size and complexity of the project.

Taking all of these precautions will help you prepare for a great shoot. As New York corporate headshot photographers, we are a all about keeping the quality high and the experience safe.

Highlight: Black Photographers

We are the kind of photography professionals that value and enjoy looking at different kinds of work all the time.  We do it because we are part of a photo community and we do it to get inspired for when we take our business headshots and corporate portraits.  While so much of our work is about creating a beautiful and consistent look for our clients and companies, the reason they are a cut above is because we learn from the masters.  We take inspiration from so many other art, documentary and New York corporate photographers out there doing their work.

The simple truth is, we love photography and consume as much of it as we can.  We love the immediate impact it makes on us.  We love thinking about the composition, the colors (or lack thereof) and the purpose of the photo.  We think about who took the photo and why that person made the creative and narrative choices they did.  We dig deep and do so, not just because we enjoy it, but because we know it helps us understand something about the world.  This, in turn, makes us better photographers.

Black Lives Matter has been on our mind, as it has been for all Americans.  We have been thinking about how Black people experience the world.  This movement and effort to deepen our understanding, as a country, is not just about this moment in 2020.  It is about every year leading up to it in America.  And we are incredibly thankful to have our fellow Black photographers to help us better understand from the myriad ways it presents and they see it.  We thank Black photographers, whether they were part of a momentous movement like the Civil Rights movement, or are just showing us something about a regular life.  We appreciate the perspective and are glad to have a starting point to understand their world.  We are grateful for what they bring to us as artists, documentarians and storytellers.  

Roy DeCarava

Roy DeCarava was a 20th century photographer that focused on black culture in a humanistic way.  He is well known for being part of the Harlem Renaissance and was an important voice in covering the events and life during that period.  

DeCarava uses shadow and light, obscure and clear, all in an effort to show us how he feels when he sees the photo.  The images combine familiar forms with context that is often just a suggestion – a profile of a backlit 4-piece band on stage, a woman with a cautious look on her face in what looks like a subway or other urban background, 2 young boys with chalk marks as the outline of a game on a city sidewalk.

He, notably, covered jazz greats John Coltrane and Billie Holiday, among others.  But he also focused heavily on how things felt and looked in Harlem from the 1940s and 1950s.  He was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship, which allowed him to focus exclusively on this community and culture of the Harlem Renaissance.  The work was part of an exhibition at the MoMA.  He was trying to create, “the kind of penetrating insight and understanding of Negroes which...only a Negro photographer [could] interpret. (From Randy Kennedy's obituary on Roy DeCarava published in the New York Times)

We are grateful for the work that he gave to us. He showed us Harlem in an artful and intimate way.  He shared his perspective on Black people living their lives and creating their own art.  

Gordon Parks

Where Roy DeCarava gave us art and feeling, Gordon Parks gives us a powerful, in-your-face documentary view of Harlem around the same time. Where DeCarava uses light, shadow and other techniques to depict his subjects, Parks was a journalist with a more straightforward, yet still powerful and masterful style.  

Born into poverty and segregation in 1912, he experienced the discrimination that was later covered in his work. Later on, Gordon Parks became a key documentarian in the Civil Rights movement and more. One of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century, committed to humanitarianism and social justice, Gordon Parks documented American life and culture from the 1940s all the way until the 2000s. His images allowed him to break the color line in professional photography while exploring the social and economic impact of poverty, racism, and other forms of discrimination.

At times, Parks used his camera to tell us how life was every day. There are the photos from a department store that show where the 'Colored Entrance' is with a woman and her daughter standing outside. There is a sense of the institutionalization of these restrictions in society, that these women were just going about their life and will enter the directed way without incident. But he takes the picture highlighting the juxtaposition of their attitude and an unfair practice. We watch a little black girl with her mother as she looks into a department store window, populated with only white mannequins. The photos are quiet images of people going about their day in worlds that are wildly racist to today's viewer.

In Gordon Park's work, we are as grateful for the everyday documentary images of Black people living in the 40's, 50's, and 60's as we are for his photos of Martin Luther King Jr and Mohammed Ali.

Endia Beal

Jumping waaaaay forward and adjusting for a totally different kind of work, consider the executive portrait photography of Endia Beal.  We are entranced with her work, Can I Touch It? The theme is “black” hair and the fascination with it by non-blacks.  It looks different and is worn differently, and there is judgment around the choices black women make about it for the workplace.

Beal's portraits are tight, standard vertical headshots. They look like professional portraits in format and style (albeit somewhat dated), down to the mottled grey/blue background.  She makes everything feel as though it is done by a normal, run of the mill executive headshot photographer.

So then it hits you, Ms. Beal's subjects, a group of middle aged white women, are wearing decidedly black hairstyles. They range from braids to large and curly. These women all look like professional, mid-career women with their 50's and 60's but it stops you to see these women in these hairstyles.  

Beal's photos force a conversation about what kind of hair is appropriate for the workplace and why something that is very much appropriate and in keeping with black hairstyles is somehow jarring – questions about why the women are styled that way arise.  A black woman with a white woman's style would not likely get a second look. In this regard, conformity does not work both ways and Ms. Beal helps us think about why.

As New York business headshot photographers, we take particular interest in the fact that Beal chose this type of photography to tell this story. We work with so many people from so many different backgrounds. While this work is an exaggeration, a work of art, it raises our awareness. It helps think about the experience of people of color who trust us to take their photos.

These are just three of many Black photographers that deserve to be highlighted. They have access to worlds that can help us understand something that is different from our own. It is a moving experience to look at this work and we are grateful for their perspective. We look forward to sharing more inspiration and highlighting more photographers of color in the future.

New York corporate headshot photographers