WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HEADSHOT, ENVIRONMENTAL AND EDITORIAL PORTRAIT?

GRESHAM HOUSE - ALL THREE CORPORATE PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY GENRES IN ONE TWO HOUR SESSION

So here we start with the obvious one that everyone knows - a headshot. In this case, on the client’s request, a little looser framing than a traditional headshot in order to give the option to either crop in or leave more room for text and for… erm… editorial use . Easy to see how one might be confused about the genres. Here I have used a white backdrop, although a headshot can have any kind of backdrop. Including whatever the environment is. So when would it then be an environmental portrait? Well we will come to that in a moment.

Okay so here we have the guys in the office environment. What makes it an environmental portrait isn’t that it is in a field or surrounded by ocean or lush tropical plants, although I have done those, and it is naturally a real pleasure. It is that you can see a significant amount of the environment in which the subject has been placed. So for example if the portrait had been taken with a long portrait lens and close up so that the environment was blurred out and barely distinguishable then it is not an environmental portrait, it is still a headshot.

As we can see the office, the Gherkin and the city skyline behind the subject, this is clearly and environmental portrait.

Sure, but these would be used for Editorial, right? I hear you ask.

Correct, they would for the most part be used in brochures and magazines. So what, then , I hear you ask, is editorial portraiture?

Well, strictly speaking it’s not quite a thing. It’s not really portraiture as such. It is more documentary close up photography. Either side of these two portrait sessions, the team had a meeting which i was also asked to document. And here we can see the natural moments and the dynamic cut and thrust of a boardroom meeting, seeing the subject “in action” and often using negative space for text placement.

So there you have it. The three big differences. Not drop me an email and let’s take some snaps!

adam rowleyJune 11, 2025Comment

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YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY AND HOW YOU WANT TO SAY IT, BUT WHAT IS YOUR BUDGET?

How much will my film cost? Is inevitably our first question. The unhelpful answer is of course, how long is a piece of string? You may want a simple one-day, one-man shoot with a quick one-day edit, and you can probably get that for under a grand if you’re not too fussy and it really is just a one-day edit. Or you might want an ambitious creative concept, with lots of pre-production followed by a complex week-long shoot, filming on a RED camera, and lots of complicated compositing and animated graphics. And that could be £20 - £30 000. Or more.

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WHY YOU HIRE A PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER

So here’s the cruel irony. Even though I know I possess the kind of staggering youthful good looks that make people catch their breath and drop their falafel when they meet me in real life, on camera I look like a laboratory experiment where the mad scientist has injected the DNA of Brendan Gleason and Charles Manson into a old potato

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Back in the mists of time, every corporate video had an ambitious narrative, like a storyboarded long-form commercial, a piece of expensive, styled, authored creative in its own right. These films do still get made and they are great. I make them myself, though more usually I work in short form. Is this always how you want to disseminate your information, your brand, your company? Sometimes yes. Just as sometimes you want to Ronseal it, to say it like it is. But do you want to be that blunt? Again probably not.

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Sure so this is where you get sold all the corporate and advertising cliches about brand identity and adding value to your message and blah blah blah. And you may not be thinking in those terms, but rather about just demonstrating something seemingly quite simple.

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YOU NEED A PHOTOGRAPHER , AND YOU ALSO WANT A CORPORATE VIDEOGRAPHER, BUT YOUR BUDGET PAYS FOR ONLY ONE OF THEM - WHAT DO YOU DO?

The short answer is of course some people can do both. The challenge is finding someone who is genuinely good at both, which is not as easy as it sounds. There are plenty of great photographers out there who can’t really shoot video. There are some good videographers out there, though they are no nearly so easy to find, and some of them are competent photographers too.

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This is where I’d like to reassure you that climate change ravaging the planet and making the lives of those few who survive the catastrophic flooding, wild fires and raging hurricanes that are predicted absolute hell.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HEADSHOT, ENVIRONMENTAL AND EDITORIAL PORTRAIT?

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