Corporate & Business Headshots in Edmonton

I set aside two hours for every session, so nothing is rushed. If you need a single image, it can take as little as 20 minutes. Several looks or outfits, the way most actors and executives come in, use most of the two hours. The price stays the same however long it takes. If you know what you want, we can be quick. Recently someone came in needing a white background to match their company’s existing headshots. It wasn’t the one they’d have picked for themselves, but keeping the team consistent mattered more. They’d also planned a dark grey background for LinkedIn and something more casual, with an outfit already picked for each. We were done in about 20 minutes, and they chose the three images they came for. If you want to try everything, there’s room for that too. Another client brought five or six suits, with shirts, ties and a few pairs of glasses, and we tried a lot of combinations. He finished with 15 to 20 frames he liked, so he added an online gallery to decide later. He picked six, came back months later for four more, and has since chosen another seven.

Yes. I’ve photographed more than 4,000 people for headshots, and almost every one of them walked in saying some version of “I don’t really want to do this,” so you’re in very good company. Most of us learned to dread photos on school picture day: a line-up, a few seconds, no say in how it turned out, at the most awkward age of our lives. Then we were told to say “cheese,” which teaches you to put on a face. My sessions are built to give you that control back. You see the photos on the screen as we go, you tell me what you don’t like, and we change it together. Camera-shy people and people who have never had a professional headshot are most of who I photograph, and the session is built for them first.

Yes, and it starts in the first few minutes. I take one shot of you as you are. The camera doesn’t add ten pounds. It flattens you from three dimensions down to two, and nobody ever showed us how to stand for that. I walk you through a few small changes in how you hold yourself that bring the depth back. Which ones depends on you, so we find them together in the session. They feel strange at first. Then we look at the screen together and compare, and the difference is usually drastic. That’s the first shift in almost every session. Once you’ve seen it work, you can trust what I’m asking for, and you feel safe doing it, even when it feels weird.

As many as you pick. You choose your favourites during the session, in front of the screen with me, so you leave knowing exactly what you’re getting. Finals are delivered within five business days of your picks, as a high-resolution file and a web-optimized one, and you can crop your own versions in as many styles as you like. The retouching isn’t signed off until you have seen it.

Yes, and nothing is final until you approve it. Temporary things like a blemish come out. Lines and wrinkles get softened and stay yours. I work the slow way: the softening happens on separate layers above the photo, evening out light and shadow, and the original pixels stay as they were. So you still look like yourself.

Yes, and it doesn’t matter who took the originals. I’ve matched existing looks for RBC, Scotiabank, TD, BDC, CBC, Chandos and Canadian Blood Services. Banks and financial firms, with the strictest brand standards, are most of it. I also do it for firms whose head office is in another city, where one or two people in Edmonton need to match everyone else. Every company handles it a little differently. Some send an existing headshot, and I match the lighting, the background and the crop from that. Others send a full lighting diagram, down to every modifier, distance and power setting, and I build the setup to match it. I’ve worked with all of them. If you’re new to the company, a colleague’s headshot from the website is enough to send. Recreating lighting is the part of this work I nerd out on most. I once spent a whole project recreating portraits by photographers I admire, and PhotoED magazine featured it.

More than anything else I bring. I trained in two theatre programs, at MacEwan and the University of Alberta, and both came down to truth: telling an authentic moment from a forced one. I use that every day. Theatre also made me a storyteller. A headshot is a different kind of story, and everything I learned about telling a good one still applies.

About 30 team days a year, and it works differently enough to have its own page: scheduling, on-location setups and keeping everyone consistent are the whole job there. See team headshots in Edmonton for how those are run and quoted.