Corporate headshots in the West End

Corporate headshots in Mayfair and St James's are usually taken in a building that started life as a house. Hedge funds, family offices, private equity firms and advisory boutiques gather around Berkeley Square, Curzon Street, Grosvenor Street and Mount Street, many of them in Georgian and Victorian townhouses converted to offices. South of Piccadilly, St James's Street, King Street, Jermyn Street and Pall Mall mix investment firms and private offices with the clubs, the galleries and the shirtmakers. Further south, Victoria and Westminster have larger, newer buildings along Victoria Street and Buckingham Palace Road, where PR and public affairs consultancies, professional bodies and corporate head offices are based.

Green Park, on the Jubilee, Piccadilly and Victoria lines, sits between Mayfair and St James's. Bond Street has Elizabeth line entrances on Davies Street and Hanover Square, at the northern edge of Mayfair, and Piccadilly Circus and Hyde Park Corner cover the two ends of Piccadilly. Victoria station joins the Victoria, District and Circle lines with mainline services from the south, and St James's Park and Westminster stations serve the streets between Victoria and Parliament. Our address, 12-14 Wilfred Street, is a few minutes' walk from both Victoria and St James's Park.

A townhouse has no loading bay and rarely a goods lift. Equipment comes in through the front door, usually up a step or two from the pavement, then either up the stairs or into a passenger lift built for a handful of people. Tell us how many floors lie between the door and the room, and whether the lift will take a trolley, and we will plan the arrival around your answer. Kerbside space in Mayfair and St James's is tight, so arriving early, before the street fills with deliveries and taxis, makes unloading easier.

Security is lighter but more personal. In a townhouse, the receptionist or the entryphone is the whole system, and a list of names the day before is normally all that is asked. Where several firms share a building, a porter or concierge will want to know when equipment is coming in and which floor it is going to. Victoria's modern buildings behave more like the City or Canary Wharf. Visitors are registered beforehand and collect passes at the front desk, equipment comes in through a loading bay, and the goods lift is booked for our arrival and departure.

Period offices have character, small rooms and little spare space. The first-floor front room, with tall sash windows and a fireplace, is often the finest room in the house, and it makes a handsome setting for Environmental portraits. Its daylight, though, shifts from hour to hour. For Classic and Editorial portraits, a quieter back room, or a lower-ground room without an outside window, holds the light steadier. Avoid rooms that people walk through to reach the kitchen or the stairs, and choose one with a door that shuts.

Measure the room you have in mind before you book, since a fireplace, a bay window or a built-in bookcase can take up more floor than it seems. In Victoria's newer buildings, choose an internal meeting room near the lifts, or a room whose blinds shut out the street, as you would in any modern office.

Funds that trade at the London open are best photographed before eight, which means an early start for our setup. Analysts and operations staff can follow later in the morning. Partners with a client lunch in the diary are easier to catch in late morning or mid-afternoon, which leaves a lunchtime block, roughly twelve until two, for the rest of the team.

Family offices and advisory boutiques tend to have more flexible days, and the main thing is to pick one when everyone is in the office. Near Westminster, public affairs teams are busiest while Parliament is sitting, so a recess week is often easier for them.

Most West End firms are small enough that the choice is simple. A partnership or a family office often fits within an Executive Day, which gives every sitter a choice of portraits. Larger funds and the head offices around Victoria usually need a Standard Day, which covers up to 40. Firms that also have people in the City or Canary Wharf can run one programme across every address. A partner in St James's and an analyst in the Square Mile then look like colleagues.

A Quarterly Programme of four Standard Days a year keeps your headshots in Mayfair, Victoria and any other office on the same written Standard as people join. Send us the address, a rough headcount and a word about the stairs, and we will suggest dates.