How to Take Better Business Portraits (for happy customers & more profit) 

My whole career has been shooting editorial and advertising. I have been shooting since 1980 and I am now starting to retire. My base is here in Los Angeles and I have had a very rewarding career. I used to shoot all my products with a 4x5 and for people a Hasselblad or a Mamiya RZ 6x7. Then everything was switched to Canon digital. I was a contract shooter for a major popular magazine for 15 years and I have photographed many celebrity home stories. I never owned a medium format digital camera. I would rent if I had needed one. I have shot many business portraits and you are correct with all your tips. For me for each person in the firm I would provide a web gallery and either the subject or the person who hired me would pick one final image and I would do minor retouching. Never take out moles unless they request. You are so right about that also a job will run a lot smoother with a skilled assistant that can also do tech work. Setting up a seamless background on location without an assistant takes too long to set up. One tip I will mention is before the shoot day each subject is given a request on their wardrobe. Men pressed shirt and pants and to make sure their jacket is free of wrinkles, women same pressed top and pants or dress. It is not easy to get wrinkles out on a fabric that has a busy pattern. No busy patterns or non company logos is desired. A company logo is fine but the client would have to approve that kind of shirt or top. If shooting at the end of the day I ask for a them to bring a second clothing change if possible. A man’s pants when sitting all day will look horrible in a picture along with their shirt. Best to shoot in the mid morning. I also ask that the women bring their own make up and their hair brush. I do bring powders for medium and dark skin tones for subjects with a shiny skin tone. Some jobs I am able to hire a hair makeup person. For me the 85 lens is the perfect portrait lens. You will need at least f8 to have both eyes sharp. Making the subject relaxed is super important. With a large group you will only have about 10 minutes with each subject so you have to show confidence when directing the subject but a good sense of humor helps them to relax too. For me I avoided real estate businesses because they never wanted to pay a fair rate. Law firms did pay the best.

This is right on time for me: I've been commissioned to take portraits of a real estate staff for their website and you have helped me a lot!

I never shoot portraits yet here I am because learning new genre is always fun and the way you explain everything is amazing you have a certain calmness in your voice

I love how Karl explain things he doesn't need to repeat it twice because he's confident and love what he's doing.. I make sure I don't miss he's videos ❤️💪 big up👌 am from South Africa

I have my first corporate shoot coming up - this video helped me tremendously. Thank you. Clear and concise wording, no fuss, straight to the point. I subscribed and saved your webpage so I can learn more in the future.

What an absolute gem of a video. Nice refresher/intro with enough wisdom to feel more confident on one’s next job. Thank you!

Very useful information. Specially the "who is in control" and the "choose and delivery" part.

I can tell you really did this with corporate people. Right on the money.

Amazing video Karl! As usual. I do a lot of corporate portraits every year, and the human/ psychological factor is really something you need to handle very well! Showing confidence, without being arrogant or a dictator. But of course, the technical factors have to be chosen wisely. Thanks for the content!

This video is packed with great information! Thanks for all the great insight. You nailed everything!

Love the videos on youtube and training website. Always learn something.

Great stuff as always. I've done high-volume headshots for a number of years and am working to seriously up my game on environmental images. Thanks Karl - keep up the great work.

Great job, Karl, very useful, very clear. Thanks a lot!

I worked as a commercial photographer myself, back in the film area. You really know your s..t, a real pleasure to watch your content.

Absolutely perfect tips and nicely explained. You really are the Master, Thank you Karl.

The most shocking eye opener to me was offering only one (!) image per subject based on their selection! Indeed that would reduce retouching and selection time a lot and harddisk space as well. Never thought of this, shooting hundreds of frames with different outfits, resulting it many keepers. And the subjects want them all... 🙂

Muchas gracias por tener la opción de traducción al español! Gracias, Gracias, Gracias!

Thank you so much sir you really opened my eyes about business portraits

You deserve more subscribers for your youtube videos. Thank you so much for your sharing your knowledge with us.

So much good information in this video alone. I can only imagine how good your classes are. In fact, I'm going to check them out. Thank you for posting this.

I enjoy how gangster you are about the technical and social problems that face the environment of biz headshots... The taking command and using humor The posture to fix clothing The reduction of ambient light Are my top 3... I'm going to use my 50mm and led lights to see what I come up with....

Very very useful. Thank you Karl!

You are waaaaay too professional Karl, i admire you so much. Big fan here from Argentina.

Karl is head and shoulders above 99% of the other tutorials on this subject on RU-vid. Good work Karl!

He is very clear with his ideas..

Great advice. Thank you so much Karl~!

Gracias por tener la opción de traducción al español 🙌🏻

Lots of great tips here - thanks, Karl.

as always, the tutorial is very useful and entertaining. Thank you for sharing.

Really informative! Thank you

I am doing my 1st internship and my task is to do a company excecatives photoshoot this is helpful.

This video is pure gold!! Thankss!!!!!!

Once again. I am so impressed by your delivery(started the free course. You know, the illustrations are very helpful in understanding the basics of photography). This got me thinking, how far I would have gone if I had you as my mathematics teacher😂. We always shoot on manual mode. Right? Great lessons on here. Thank you once again for taking the time to help us improve our photography!🙏🏿

On point as always! Great explanations, nice and useful tips. Big fan of your videos :)

Great tutorial on how to shoot business portraits, Karl. I have been soaking in tons of information on karltayloreducation.com, but had not yet watched the videos on this subject. Thanks for doing what you do. You are a great educator.

Karl Taylor is definitely the go to Guy on matters Photography. Honestly speaking, to test whether a concept is true or not in this field, he is the encyclopedia. Thank You Sir

Great tips!

Very useful indeed! Thank you as usual.

Invaluable as always. Thank you

Thanks for the effort and sharing. I am an appreciative subscriber. Stay well. Thumbs up.

Thank you for usefull information

great content! pro!

Top tips! Thanks Karl!

Sehr cool, danke!

thanks for valued tips and notes

Thanks Karl!

Thx. Very useful 👍

karl thank you so much for great english speaking.... as i am non english speaker (native) audiance .... i can understand every single world perfectly. unlikely the other instructer are speaking like all audiance are american citizen or UK citizen. thank you again.

The main and the plain ! Very clear, thanks. You should add a pricing section, it’s very important to cover the whole topic.

AWESOME VIDEO, I just want to know check if it is not important to have a chronological planner to know who you are shooting in order to place the photos in the right format for the client?

Thanks for posting! I'll check out your online classes.

You are a great Teacher and Photographer!!!

Excellent video! Cheers mate 😁

your amazing mr karl

absolutely amezing

Very well explained, how about a video on the group photography

Lots of terrific stuff here as always, but the best tip comes right up front: It's all about what the company wants, not what the subject wants. I'm nowhere near Karl's level, of course, but I used to do in-house headshots for a company website, and I remember a sales manager who wanted to look like a tough guy. HIM: "I'm not a smiley guy. I don't smile." ME: "Yeah, you do. The company wants people to know that business is good." HIM: "Yeah, okay, I see what you mean... how's this?" He had a Hollywood-quality smile, just had to get him to use it!

Excellent points. Thank you

Thank you. Your videos are excellent

Great tips and explanations, thanks mate. ;)

Great tips and explanations, thanks u sir

Thank you Karl!!

Excellent class

THANK YOU

Thank you Karl for the tips, company photos are one of my most awkward shoots, ngl.

Brilliant - it is exactly as you are saying!

thank you..this was helpful

Thank you for this great video. I take a lot of business portraits so it‘s allways nice to compare my workflow with others. How long do you keep the raw files? Once you get a lot of clients it gets impossible to keep all the files. I tend to delete them after two years.

awesome recap and reminds me to re-visit these tutes on membership site - i re joined recenty and done absolutely nothing so far!

Nice education for us and thanks for sharing

Thank you Karl! :)

Thank You...

Thank you sir 😊

Thank you Sir Karl

Great thank you Karl

Very informative and confidently delivered video. Thank you Karl! I'm wondering what backgrounds and light modifiers did you use when you first started doing on location business headshots at the beginning of your career? Was it a slow or quick progession to what you use presently? Thank you for your feedback! 🙂

Highly educative

A master teacher.

This is good information.

Any tips on how to get an evenly lit grey background? A gradient grey is fairly easy but I'm having trouble getting it evenly lit. Especially in a smaller space. Thanks!

nice overview Karl

Excellent.

Thank you so much..

Very useful video.

Great Tutorial from Phil Collins!

Awesome & Thanks :)

Great tips and video. Than you!

such a good and well scripted video

Great

I just started taking such portraits, great advises, Thank again Karl!

Hi Karl thanks for the infos:) may i ask what lens did you use for this youtube video to film yourself? Thanks again

I'm going to use my para 133 next week for the first time on a business portrait. Will be my first time using it professionally and to be honest I wasn't really sure people used para's for business portraits. I do have a fairly good idea how I want to light the subject, but was a bit disappointed in the amount of hashtags on instagram there were of headshot photographers.

Excellent point about shooting for the company and not what the individual likes. This also applies to design in that design represents the company (and the brand) not the individual. Not many photographers understand that the brand includes the style of photography used.

What about a 135mm with a full frame? A lot of the greatest portrait lenses are in that range. Would you recommand it?

Thank you Sir, this information came at the right time. I jus have one question; What’s the most important thing when I approach a business to offer them my photography services for professional headshots?

Sar 100mm is a very good lens for portraits but can I go with 85mm

Hey Karl, what is an ideal amount of retouched images you would deliver to a model that did a collab shoot for Social Media?

Thank you for the video! I already had a few business shoot but my last one was really bad. I failed at so many things. I appreciate for the info I forgot thinking about.

Amazing

Hey Karl how do u get business clients?