Meet the team photoshoot and Mitali's Blog photos!

13/04/2023
"People do business with those that they know like and trust. A "Meet the Team" page helps potential clients get to the point of knowing, liking and trusting you. " (Melinda McCaw Media, 2023)

I really enjoyed being able to incorporate photography into the project. We mainly focused on being a brand identity rather than individuals within a brand, so having the opportunity to use my specialism in this project, even if only for a small part, was welcomed, as my work previously revolved around the workshops and research.

When looking at the meet-the-team photos that I was going to be shooting, I researched into real life examples of companies. Most of them were individual headshots, but the websites I looked at were very creative with them.

  • Matchstic

Matchstic is a branding agency, and you can see the way they've branded themselves on their website, everything is on one theme. When you hover over the photos of the team, you get a mini graphic decoration that appears on the photo, this is very creative and colourful, as opposed to the black and white headshots.

  • Cloud Horizon

Cloud Horizon has a very fun meet the team section. Again, this has a hover-over feature. However, this one goes from black and white headshots to in colour photos of the members as children. It creates a personal touch between the brand and the viewer.

  • Stink Studios

Stink Studios also had a very creative approach to their meet the team section. Theirs was more of a gallery set up but the photos change, highlighting a few members of the team at a time. While I think visually, this is engaging, due to the number of team members Stink Studios has, you'd have to sit of couple minutes to view the team. This is somewhat time-consuming, especially if you're looking for a particular member of staff to reach out to.

Taking all these into account, and after a discussion with my team, we decided that our meet the team section would be a group shot. Not only does a collective photo show a strong team who work together well for our clients, but it also serves as a memento to the team that informs the collective goal and inspires us to work towards it. Meet-the-teams are incredibly important to solidify a brand. It shows the face behind the idea which creates a personal bond between the customers and the brand.

These are some of the images that we created:


I was reminded of something Nic Clear said during his lecture with us. There is more information on him in the blog post I wrote about him which you can find here, but Nic is the Dean here at Huddersfield University for Arts and Humanities.

One thing that Nic said was "framing of something is as important as the object itself."(Clear. 2023) Now he was talking about the physical framing of a piece of art but for photographers, framing encapsulates the composition of an image. It refers to how everything is set up before the button is clicked, including the rules of composition, where the subject is in comparison to the background. All these parts are important to the final outcome of the image and for these headshots, for the group shot, they need to look professional as we are presenting ourselves to the public as a team.

The first image I took was on a black backdrop, we soon realised this altered the tone of the image, making it seem more serious or almost sinister. We wanted to create a more light-hearted image to suggest a more open, friendly, and welcoming feel to the group and to our customers.

I did struggle to find a photo we'd taken with all of us looking at the camera and so, in the end, I used Photoshop to merge two photos together to create the final image:

fig. 11
fig. 11

There were also parts of a background curtain in the shot and so I had to remove these via the Content-aware tool.

In order to merge these two images, I had to create a layer mask of the photo where Andrew was looking at the ceiling, the one with him looking at the camera on the layer underneath. Then using the paint tool, I started to allow parts of the image through until they merged seamlessly together. You can watch a time-lapse of me editing these together here:

youtube.com/shorts/p2zv2L8Fj2Y?feature=share

We also needed a few headshots for the other aspects of the project, such as the swiping part of the website creation and the messaging, so we could demonstrate how these work more realistically. These turned out like this:

I used the same white back drop as it makes the image seem brighter. The headshots bring a professional style to the images that make the users seem more creditable as practitioners.

I also worked closely with Mitali for her blog posts. She wanted some images of herself and a painting she did in relation to the group project. She wanted her make-up to be professionally done and so I reached out and contacted a make up artist, Jessie France. I offered her some headshots of Mitali as payment for the make-up look and she agreed, as these can be used in her portfolio. The images turned out like this:

We wanted the images to be simplistic as the main focus of them was the painting and so we chose a white background. Mitali, as the model, was wearing dark clothes and so I felt she would pretty much disappear into the backdrop if it was black. The reason I was against using a coloured backdrop, was in regard to the painting itself. The artwork was the most important element of the photograph and so I think that any colour would either contrast the painting too much or distract from it.

Lighting Techniques

  • fig.24 is the lighting set-up I had for the headshots. It required just a beauty dish. I used this modifier as due to its structure it helps distribute the light towards the focal point and is one of the most used modifiers in portrait photography.
  •  fig. 25, the group shot, required a more complex lighting set-up. The beauty dish remained on to light faces from the front but due to there being a total of 8 of us in the studio, I also needed to light them from the sides as well. The lighting on the right was a vertical softbox, they are long and so they helped me light the bodies of those standing near the back. Due to the light from these two being pretty even, I only needed to add a little bit of light on the left. The modifier I used here is called 'barn doors'. The movable 'doors' help you to direct the light to where you need it most. This meant that I could target the area that was lacking sufficient light easily and ensure every subject was lit. Since I was included in this image I had a remote trigger in my hand that set off the camera when I clicked it.

fig. 24
fig. 24
fig. 25
fig. 25


Conclusion

Overall, I think the images turned out well. They appear professional and are consistent and cohesive with the branding which is important when forming a brand identity. The clothing in the photos are without logo which can be distracting and can seem like we are partnered with companies we are not. Next time, I'd really like to do something more creative like the examples I included. Perhaps, I could create something like the hover-over feature but rather than drawings or an old photo, it could perhaps be a piece of work the team member has created as Unboxt is focused on sharing art with the community. Eg. if i took the two photos of Mitali, the one of her headshot and the one of her holding her painting, when hovering-over the first image, it would change to show her holding her art work.

References

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