How to Find a Profitable Market as a Corporate Photographer

There is a popular story that when the famous criminal Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he replied: “because that’s where the money is.”

Whether the story is true or not, the sentiment is. If you want a new and profitable niche for your photography, look at medium to large corporations for the same reason. Although it can be repetitious, it can also be an excellent market to add to any professional photographer’s bag of tricks. A business portrait gig can be as quick and easy as a single headshot for a magazine article, or, ideally, portraits of everyone for an annual report.

I was doing a lot of headshots for models to add to my stock portfolio a few years back when I got the call.

“Would you be interested in doing 80 headshots for a local insurance broker? They also want group shots and photos of the interior of their offices.”

I did the math quickly in my head and replied, “absolutely!”

That’s how I stumbled into this lucrative niche, but you don’t need to sit around waiting for the phone to ring. This job was for their annual report, which led me to an easy method to solicit that market.

Most public companies produce an annual report, and these reports are easily attainable. Most are on their websites. So finding this virtually endless list of potential clients is easy. The larger problem may be in how you limit the list of companies to contact.

First, look at the geographic area you want to cover. I live in the suburbs of Atlanta, so I can limit myself to a half-hour drive and access thousands of companies. Depending on the size of your town, you may need to go further afield. But keep in mind, depending on the size of clients you target, you may only need a handful a year. The great news about annual reports, they come out once a year!

The next consideration is the size of the client. Once you start, each shot only takes a few minutes, so you can move quickly. But the job can get tedious and will require a quick turnaround, so don’t go overboard. My first client had 80 employees, which is a good size for me. Fortunately, the number of employees is another useful piece of information you can get from their website.

The final piece of the marketing side is contacting the clients. You should be able to determine from the report itself if they produce it internally or with an outside contractor. If not, place a call to the company and ask to speak with public relations, the press office, or, if all else fails, human resources.

The key is to find the decision-maker who hires the photographer. This is another good reason to limit your scope. The bigger the company, the better chance they use a large outside firm to produce their reports that will have in-house talent do the photography.

Once you know the contact, use your standard elevator pitch. Introduce yourself, tell them what services you offer, and ask if you can email them a link to your portfolio. If possible, point out something you saw in their last report that you could improve upon, or another way to differentiate yourself. Keep in mind that the perception is this job is easy to produce, so price point may be the sole deciding factor. Only you can determine your bottom line, but don’t forget to include processing and travel time in your estimate.

If you don’t have a decent portfolio of headshots, rewind to my paragraph about models. Models are always looking for new headshots, and you can offer them what they call TFP (Time for Prints). This means they get your service for free, and you get images you can use in your portfolio. If you don’t know where to start, Model Mayem is a good place to get in touch with models in your area.

Once you close the deal, it’s time for the business and planning side of things. First, you need to meet with the contact person on-site and hammer out the details. You need to make sure that everyone has agreed upon the exact requirements and deliverables upfront, in writing, and signed off on by all relevant parties.

In that first job of mine, the headshot requirements were fairly direct. They wanted simple above the waist shots of each individual on a white background. They also had departments of between five and eighty people they wanted to be shot as a group. Finally, they wanted architectural details of the interior and a night shot of the exterior of their office building.

On that job, I got lucky, and a bit spoiled. The interior was stunning, and there was a huge, twin, winding staircase on which to take the large groups. They also had half a dozen conference rooms with luxurious appointments where I could shoot the smaller departments.

But wait, it gets better.

I estimated ten minutes per person and added time for the group shots and interiors. I presented my contact with a price that covered three days of shooting, plus processing time. She said that sounded good, but wanted to make sure we didn’t rush people and cover scheduling conflicts, let’s make it seven days.

I tried not to grin when I accepted her proposal. But it brings up a good point. The more people involved, the larger the chance for unforeseeable delays. Factor in extra time. There’s no point being a low bidder on a job, only to lose money on it. Best case, you won’t see that client again for another year.

Before you can price the job, you need to tour the location and see where you will take the shots. Take your camera and shoot at each location, to get a feel for the ambient lighting. You also need to think about backgrounds, if you aren’t using a studio setup.

Even if you are using strobes and a studio background, the ambient lighting can determine your exposure settings. In most of my shots, we were in a training room with fluorescents overhead, so I shot at the fastest sync speed. But some group shots were back-lit by a huge palladium window, so I used only essential strobes, dragged the shutter, and let the warm ambient light do its thing.

Also, discuss the timing and availability of the subject or subjects. If it is a few executives, when can they make themselves accessible? If you are shooting a large group coming to a central location, how quickly can they round them up? If you are taking shots of groups, someone needs the authority to make sure they are all free at the same time.

You can’t expect executives to queue up like elementary school kids getting their pictures taken. But they can’t expect the photographer to stand around waiting for another subject to wander in. Ten minutes apiece would be a good sequence if they can arrange it.

One final point of negotiation — and this is important. You need someone from the company to be available as your facilitator. Ideally, they will shadow you through the entire job. They are responsible for herding cats, getting you through security, and any other details you need to be taken care of. If the shoot will span multiple days, have them designate a secure space where you can leave your equipment. A small training room is perfect. You don’t want to leave your camera and lenses, but the background and lights should stay in place.

Once you settle and agree on all that, put everything in writing and get it signed by someone in authority. On the subject of payment, you need to take a lesson from wedding photographers. Never start without advance payment. The way I have structured corporate shoots is this: 25% deposit to reserve the time, and 50% paid on the first day prior to unloading equipment.

The final 25% is paid on final delivery and acceptance. Most wedding shooters demand 100% upfront, but this is a different environment, and I have found most companies understand and accept my terms.

Arrive early on the day of the shoot. You need to set up the background, if any, and set up and test lights. Use your facilitator as a stand-in to check lights and positions. Use pieces of gaffer’s tape to mark the location of the background, all lights and the spot or stool where the subject will be. If someone moves your equipment, you won’t have to start over.

Finally, all the business and planning has happened and you are ready to shoot. This will be more of a production line than other types of portraits, but that doesn’t mean to treat the subjects like moving parts. Take a minute to talk to them and make them feel at ease. You may only have ten minutes, but that’s a long time. If you spend half of that making them comfortable, the results will show it.

Unfortunately, you will always have a few people that absolutely hate getting their picture taken, and will let you know they are doing it only under duress. Just make the best of it, get the best shot you can, and move on.

One other thing will be important, whether or not you have a facilitator, especially if an outside vendor compiles the report. For the first shot in each series, have the subject write their name on a whiteboard and hold it up. You can joke that you are taking mug shots to help loosen the mood. I told that joke 80 times on that first shoot and many times since. It always works.

This shot will be invaluable later when you are entering metadata and getting the shots ready to deliver. A whiteboard is better than a chalkboard. You don’t want to take a chance on getting chalk dust on their business attire, and the whiteboard can help to adjust the white balance later. Even with every controllable element the same, different colored outfits and complexions will throw the white balance off from picture to picture.

Once you have completed the shooting, you still have post-processing and need to deliver the images. You want to keep any processing to an absolute minimum. Ideally, you’ve got everything exactly right in camera and there won’t be any post-processing. This is a good reason to span multiple days on the shoot. You can view the first day’s images and adjust. At any rate, create a template to enter metadata on import, with your copyright and contact info, the client’s name and other pertinent data. Only add the person’s name somewhere in the file if required in your contract, as that is a lot of extra work.

Now you just need to deliver the images, along with an invoice for the rest of your balance.

Once you get your foot in the door at a company, keep in touch and follow up. Companies have a large marketing budget and there are many opportunities for a talented photographer whose work they trust. Corporate photography can be every bit as lucrative as wedding photography, with much less stress and fewer bridezillas. Build yourself a small network of corporate clients and you will have a constant revenue stream.

One final takeaway from my first corporate client. I was ready on the first day. I had done some test shots without a subject, then asked the facilitator to sit on the stool while I fine-tuned the lighting and exposure. She had on a solid green outfit, which played havoc with the white balance displayed on my monitor, so when I took the first shot, I said, “yikes!”

Trust me. Don’t say yikes.

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