Team Headshots Across Three Cities for GEC Architecture

When GEC Architecture reached out, they were in the middle of a rebrand: a new visual identity they described as bold, contemporary and warm, and a new website planned for July 1, 2025. The headshots had to be done by mid-June, and GEC had shortlisted six photographers across Calgary and Edmonton for the job.

The leadership team was spread across three offices in two provinces: roughly 10 people in Edmonton, 15 in Calgary and 3 in Toronto. Twenty-eight people, and one new look that had to hold no matter which office you walked into.

They asked for two quotes, one covering all three cities and one covering just Edmonton and Calgary. They went with all three.

The most useful thing in the brief was the example imagery they sent, showing the polished, editorial style of headshot the partners were after. That gave me something concrete to build toward, rather than guessing at “professional headshots” in the abstract.

Before booking flights, I got on a call with GEC to talk through the spaces. One thing came up quickly: all three offices had a lot of natural light, with big windows and open floor plans.

A lot of my headshot work is lit with continuous light, and its one downfall is light contamination. In a big, windowed office, when the sun is rising or setting, that orange and yellow hue bleeds into the colour of the photos. There are ways around it: flagging the light, or fixing it in retouching. But flagging means more gear, and this kit had to travel. And fixing it in post is something I always try to stay away from, especially while a project is still being planned.

So for GEC I brought strobes. Their flash is so much brighter than the daylight in the room that the window light doesn't register in the photo, whatever the sun is doing. I shoot these at f/13, and without the strobes the frame is almost completely black. The daylight stayed in the room as ambience; it just wasn't changing the temperature or the colour of the images.

Strobes are heavier and bulkier than working with window light, so this wasn't a trip I could do with just a camera bag. Everything had to survive checked baggage, set up quickly in an office I'd never seen, and give the same result in every city.

The key light is a large octabox, single diffused, and the fill is a large six-foot umbrella, also diffused. No reflectors. For the two bigger spring shoots, in Edmonton and Calgary, the background was a nine-foot roll of light grey seamless paper. For Toronto, and for the new hires since, it's a Lastolite collapsible background, which folds down small enough to travel.