Consultancy and accountancy headshots that match across every office

Consultancy headshots tend to be needed in bursts. The partner intake is the largest. New partners are announced together, and each of them wants a fresh photograph for the news release, their web profile and the first proposal to name them as partner. The graduate intake follows in the autumn, when a large group arrives at once and each graduate should have a proper profile picture before being staffed on a client.

Between those dates the work itself creates demand. Every proposal and credentials deck has a team page. A bid team assembling one at short notice will use whatever picture each person has, which is how a studio portrait ends up beside a cropped holiday snap. Experienced hires arrive all year. Thought leadership needs author photographs, and conference organisers ask speakers for a current image. When firms merge, or a firm rebrands after taking on investment, every office suddenly needs the same look. Opening a regional office, or relaunching the website, raises the same question on a smaller scale.

Advisory firms sit across a wider range than banks or law firms. Strategy and technology consultancies often want a portrait with some life in it. Our Environmental style, with the firm's own space blurred behind the sitter, suits them, as does Dynamic, which brings movement and expression to the same backdrops. Audit and tax practices tend to stay with Classic, which is plain, even and easy to reuse in a tender. A firm can also use both, with Classic for proposals and a second look for the website.

Partners are the faces clients see first, so they usually sit on an Executive Day. Each partner can choose from three finished portraits, and the retoucher spends 30 to 45 minutes on every one, against 15 to 25 on a Standard Day. Managers, consultants and graduates sit on Standard Days. The Standard records what the two groups share: the backdrop, the crop and the eye line. A partner and the analyst beside them on a team page then clearly belong to the same firm.

Project rooms call for care. Client names appear on whiteboards, wall plans and screens, and a portrait should never carry one. Our backdrops keep all of that out of shot. For Environmental portraits we agree beforehand which spaces are clear, often a reception, a staircase or a quiet corner of an open floor.

Hybrid working shapes the day more than anything else. Many firms have an anchor day or two each week when the office is full, and that is the day to book. The firm circulates the link and each person chooses a ten-minute window around their calls, so a consultant back from a client site for the day can sit between meetings. In accountancy, avoid busy season: the first months of the year, when December year-end audits are under way and the 31 January self-assessment deadline is close, leave few people free.

Graduates are easiest to photograph during induction, when they are in one building and on one timetable. Partners may prefer a separate, quieter day, which is what the Executive Day provides: no more than 12 sitters, and longer finishing on every portrait.

Four visits a year fit the advisory calendar closely. One follows the partner announcement and another meets the graduate intake. The other two pick up experienced hires and anyone who was at a client last time, and keep the website and the proposal library current. The Quarterly Programme gives you four Standard Days, at a day rate fixed for twelve months, which can be split between London and the regions. Between visits the sitter portal stays open, so a consultant asked for a photograph for a bid can download it straight away.

Consistency is what a bid team notices. Your Corporate Headshot Standard is written after the first day, and each session that follows is held to it, whoever is behind the camera. Each image is finished by hand. Exposure and white balance are brought to the Standard's reference frame, and temporary blemishes and lint are removed while skin texture is left alone. Every portrait is then checked against those around it before release. Consultancy headshots kept to one standard let a credentials deck look like the work of one firm, even when its pages were assembled from several offices.

Let us know roughly how many partners, staff and graduates work from each location, along with your intake dates, and we will draw up a programme to match.