The Complete Guide to Corporate Photography for Businesses
Corporate photography is often overlooked in business. Yet, despite this, it can provide crucial insight into your organisation’s people, culture, and processes.
From a potential employee or customer standpoint, this is priceless. It can help both parties determine the trustworthiness of your business, which could potentially increase the likelihood of engagement.
What is Corporate Photography
Corporate photography refers to professional photography services that focus on businesses and corporations. Unlike commercial photography, which focuses on selling products, corporate photography is used to highlight the company’s people, culture, and processes.
The Importance of Corporate Photography for Businesses
Corporate photography acts as the first impression for many potential customers. It’s a view into your business, its people, and operations before they make the initial contact.
Photos speak a thousand words—a thousand words in seconds, which is why professional photography provides 45% more leads than stock photos.
It doesn’t only help attract potential customers, either. It helps build a brand image. An image that attracts customers and employees to your organisation.
Types of Corporate Photography
There are many different types of corporate photography. Though they’re all in a professional setting, each helps showcase your company in a different way.
Corporate Headshots and Portraits
One of the most common types of corporate photography are headshots and portraits. These are professionally taken images of your employees’ faces, which can be used on a website, social media, business card, email signatures, internal material, and so forth.
Team Photos
Following the above, you have team photos, which are more for illustrating your company’s culture and teamwork. Typically, these photos showcase either your team as a whole or how they collaborate and interact.
These images are particularly important for external stakeholders. It puts faces to a brand, enabling them to see who is working for them. Plus, it can even be used to document how the team has grown over the years.
Office Environment and Workplace
Workplace photos are a lot like lifestyle photos. They show the physical environment where your employees operate. A lot of the time, these are ‘in-action’ photos, so they show real interaction among your employees.
From both the customer and external stakeholder point of view, this can lead to a sense of professionalism and trust. It can present them with an inside look into the company’s culture, which allows them to see your internal business values.
Corporate Events
Corporate events don’t happen every day. A lot of the time, they’re yearly or quarterly. It’s not something that happens a lot. Therefore, document it. Use corporate event photography to highlight the event for those who missed out.
Alongside this, it can also be used as advertising photography. You can use these photos to promote your next event. If the photos are correctly taken, it can showcase to viewers the importance of your gathering and persuade them to come next time.
Architectural and Building
When it comes to architecture and building photos, the goal is to capture a company’s facilities. Think office buildings, warehouses, production facilities, etc.
This helps present the scale of your operations. It can also build trust and reliability, as it showcases to viewers the extensiveness of your company.
In-Action and Lifestyle
In-action or lifestyle photography is about capturing something as it happens. Therefore, from a corporate photography standpoint, this is when you take photos of the employees working or interacting with each other.
This can be beneficial for both potential clients and employees. It reinforces the company’s commitment to professionalism, culture, and well-being, which can be attractive for both parties.
Corporate Photography vs Commercial Photography
Commonly, corporate photography gets mixed up with commercial photography. However, they’re two completely different photography areas.
Factor | Corporate Photography | Commercial Photography |
Objective | Focuses on capturing the business culture, employees, and branding. | Focuses on selling and marketing products or services. |
Primary Subject | Employees, teams, office spaces, and events. | Products, models, and services. |
Usage | Internal reports, website, recruitment, social media, etc. | Advertising campaigns, e-commerce, catalogues, etc. |
Audience | Stakeholders, employees, business partners, potential employees, customers | Consumers |
Creative Approach | Mostly professional | Product-focused |
Why Hire a Professional Corporate Photographer
Quality and Expertise
The quality of photography has a direct impact on how your brand is perceived. Simply put, if it doesn’t look professional, people don’t see it as professional.
This is further backed by some research from Search Engine Land. They discovered that 60% of consumers are more likely to consider or contact a business based on the quality of their images.
Consistent Branding
Consistent branding also plays a key role in a business’s success. A study even suggests that companies with consistent branding see a 33% boost in revenue.
Being consistent in your branding, through imagery or marketing materials, helps build trust. It allows people to ‘get to know your brand’ over time, dramatically impacting how it’s perceived.
Effective Communication
65% of people are visual learners, making photography incredibly important for conveying messages. Not only this, but visual content gets 180% more engagement on social media.
Together, it’s clear to see that photography provides an outlet for effective communication. It allows viewers to get an understanding of a brand without needing to do in-depth research.
Avoiding DIY Mistakes
Though corporate photography is very affordable compared to the outcomes it can provide, many ‘DIY’ the photos.
At first, this may seem more cost-effective. However, it can damage your brand in ways you could never imagine.
Therefore, it’s best to leave it to the professionals. I’ll reshape your company’s image, ensuring its credibility isn’t ruined by an unprofessional representation of your company, culture, and employees.
Average Corporate Photography Prices
Corporate photography ranges massively in pricing. At Masoud Raoufi, our prices consist of the following:
Service | Price |
Corporate Photography | 450 AED Per Hour 1,500 AED Per-Day |
Photo Retouching | Included |
Photo Stylish and Lighting | Included |
Express Service | +100 AED Per Photo |
Super Express Service | +280 AED Per Photo |
Group Photos | +90 AED Per Photo |
For more information about pricing, check out our pricing page. For larger projects, reach out for a customised quote.
How to Prepare for a Corporate Photography Session
If you’re going to hire a corporate photographer, you need to be prepared. This ensures a smooth session and also a session that’s productive and worthwhile.
1. Define Goals
Before anything, you need to determine your goals for the corporate photography sessions. This won’t only make it easier to manage but also increase the photos’ effectiveness.
First, think about the specific outcomes you expect. Are you using the images for your website, marketing materials, or internal purposes? Are you hoping to improve specific metrics, such as the number of candidates from a marketing campaign?
You can then think about other areas, like how you’re going to reach these goals. Are you going to use headshots, action shots, or team photos? Or perhaps a mixture of all three?
2. Create a Shot List
Once you have some goals, you can start making a shot list. This is just a list of all the required shots you need to meet your goals.
Take your time here. Think about where you’ll be using the photos. For instance, you may want a new cover photo for your website, individual employee profile images for LinkedIn, and aerial photos of your facilities.
When you know what photos you want, and why, write them down. You’ll be able to pass this on to the photographer you hire to ensure nothing is missed.
3. Style and Branding
You should also think about the style and branding of the shots on your shots list. Think about how you want your company to be represented in these images. Do you want them to be smart, casual, funny, etc?
It’s important to match the style and branding to your company’s culture. A company like Facebook will have a widely different approach to corporate photography than, let’s say, a smaller mom-and-pop business.
4. Location and Setup
Alongside the above, consider the locations for the images. For headshots, you may need to book a photo studio.
For lifestyle or in-action photos, however, you’ll really need to think about where in your facilities you want photos taken. Perhaps in the office, a courtyard, in the warehouse, etc., wherever the location it must be set up for the photographer to perform their services effectively.
How to Choose the Right Corporate Photographer
If you’re thinking about hiring a corporate photographer, follow the below guide to help you choose the right person.
1. Find Corporate Photographers in Your Area
You can look for professional photographers in various areas – social media, business directories, or through referrals.
Research shows that most photographers get their business through Instagram. So, this is a good place to start. It does, however, lack local searching capability.
You’ll also find business directories online for your local area. For example, in Dubai, we have the Dubai Business Directory, plus various others. A quick search for ‘photographers’ or ‘corporate photographers’ will bring up a lot of options.
Plus, you can ask about. Maybe you know someone who’s hired a photographer that they were satisfied with. They may even recommend us at Masoud Raoufi.
2. Review Their Corporate Photography Portfolios
After searching your area for corporate photographers, you may have found one (or a few). You should now take a look at their photography portfolios.
For the most part, photographers have large online portfolios, regardless of whether they’re corporate photographers or not.
At Masoud Raoufi, our photography portfolio is very comprehensive. You’ll see all of our completed projects on our website, along with a ton of corporate photo examples.
3. Search for Client Testimonials and Reviews
If you’re happy with a photographer’s or group of photographers’ portfolios, the next process of elimination is looking for client testimonials and reviews.
You can find these everywhere. On the photographer’s website, on Google, on social media, or on review-specific platforms like Trustpilot.
The goal here is to just get an idea of their quality. It’ll save you a lot of meetings and headaches, so it’s more than worth completing this step.
4. Discuss Your Goals with Them
You’ve found corporate photographers in your area, you’ve reviewed their portfolios, and you’re satisfied with their client testimonials. The next thing to do is to contact them.
When you contact them, talk about your goals. Mention what you want to achieve and when you want to achieve it. The photographer will then provide a quote and a detailed breakdown of their services and how they can help you.
Conclusion
As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into corporate photography. Though popular, it’s not just headshots. It’s a way to accurately represent your company, its employees, and its culture to clients and employees.
If you’re in Dubai or the UAE and want corporate photography, feel free to contact us at Masoud Raoufi. We’ve been helping those in the area for over 12 years, providing them with images that truly represent their organization.
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