Portraits that give context

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What a pleasure it was to do an environmental portrait shoot this week, even on a day of -14℃ temperatures. The challenge was to make images that captured both the client’s personality and his institutional context before the client himself succumbed to hypothermia!

Bart Groothuis is a Dutch Member of the European Parliament, with particular expertise and particular responsibilities in the area of cybersecurity. With only the exterior of the European Parliament’s Brussels site to work with as background, I wanted to make at least one image that suggested his deep interest in digital technologies. This is what I came up with:

Why you need a new professional portrait now

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Here in Belgium, hairdressers will reopen on 13 February after a long break due to the coronavirus. A number of my clients have delayed a portrait session until they could get their hair done. They will be coming to the studio over the next few weeks. Perhaps you’d like to come too.

There are other good reasons to upgrade your professional image now. Here are the most important:

  1. Top of mind — With travel bans and telework likely to remain the norm for the foreseeable future, meetings with colleagues and collaborators (not to mention family and friends) will continue to take place largely online. It is more important than ever that your contacts retain a positive image of you, and the value of high-quality photographs showing you at your best has never been greater. They should be used everywhere — for your social media profiles, in the signature of your emails. for your chat avatars…

  2. Time’s arrow — None of us look like we did in 2010. It’s important that your professional image shows you as you are today, with all your accumulated experience and wisdom!

  3. The attention economy — People’s online images are in general pretty weak — poorly framed, badly lit, blurred. Many look as if they were shot in the Photomaton at Paris’ Gare de l’Est featured in the film Amélie. Take this as an opportunity. A professionaly composed and lit portrait will help you stand out from the crowd.

  4. Self-image boost — Seeing beautiful images of yourself is pleasing and profoundly reassuring. After the last twelve months, we could all do with a bit of a boost.

See you soon, I hope.

2020 – it could have been worse

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I count myself extremely lucky. I have not caught the coronavirus. I have not had to endure confinement alone, or in a tiny apartment. And I no longer rely on my photographic work to pay a mortgage or university fees.

But many others have suffered and are suffering horribly. I’m especially conscious of the difficulties of younger photographers.

2020 didn’t work out anything like I’d expected. Many personal and professional plans had to be abandoned. But I can still find a lot of positives to draw from this year – above all, the rich and intense encounters that I have had with my wonderful subjects. The pleasure that my photographs have given them is the fuel that propels me forward into 2021.

Studio portrait of a young woman

2020 has seen an unprecedented number of jobs cancelled or postponed, sometimes several times. I still have bookings for weddings originally planned during the summer, for which the couples concerned now have tentative dates in 2021. I had two periods of complete shutdown, in April-May and again in November, and no conference work at all (and very little corporate work of any kind) after mid-March. So I lost three whole months out of my year, as well as most of the corporate work that had accounted for 55% of my income in 2019.

Despite that, I delivered nearly 100 contracts, up 15% from the previous year, though revenue was down by 18%. From June onwards I focused my online marketing exclusively towards the private market. In particular, I shot a large number of portrait sessions – income from portrait work tripled compared with 2019. Surprisingly, given the general anxiety about social distancing, over 70% of portrait sessions were shot in the studio, up from 50% the year before.

Saturdays continued to be my busiest working day of the week in 2020, and Wednesdays were still the day on which the largest number of people got in touch for the first time. (I’ve never understood why Wednesday would be the day people are most likely to think about hiring a photographer.) I continued to advertise online with Google Ads. But an increasing number of leads and contracts came from ‘free’ sources, especially from Google My Business and from previous customers. GMB and organic search accounted for nearly 20% of delivered contracts, and repeat business for nearly 25%.

Studio portrait of a man

I improved as a photographer. Of course I did – I learn from every job I do!

More specifically, I finally accepted the advice of my friend and colleague Phil Mortreux (Hire him, he’s a brilliant film-maker and photographer!) that shooting exclusively in RAW would allow me to deliver higher numbers of really top-quality images from each shoot.

Second, I continued to develop my portrait studio. I added a pair of Elinchrom ELC-500 studio lights. These have been a pleasure to work with from the start, and really do give me complete freedom to light my subjects in all the ways I want. And I acquired two gorgeous collage backdrops created by British artist Gail Fox. I cannot wait to start shooting portraits against these in 2021.

Finally, I refined the way I use Adobe Lightroom to edit my images, including the integration of a number of tricks taught to me by Phil Mortreux. (Thanks, Phil!) I have a light-touch approach to post-processing, but Lightroom is critical in enabling me to deliver clean, sharp, colour-balanced image files to my clients quickly.