For this branding shoot with Hartles & Co from Lugtons, I photographed their larger team in Hamilton, creating a broad collection of professional portraits and lifestyle-led branding imagery.

The finished gallery has a rich, contemporary feel, with a mixture of individual portraits, team combinations and more relaxed photographs throughout the session.

A more lifestyle-led approach

Not every professional photograph needs everyone looking directly at the camera.

Throughout the shoot I created a mixture of direct-to-camera portraits alongside more relaxed imagery, including people looking away, interacting with each other and moving naturally through the space.

With a larger team, there were also plenty of opportunities to photograph different combinations, from individual portraits and smaller groups through to wider team images.

Creating variety throughout the shoot

One of my favourite things about a longer branding session is being able to create plenty of variation within one gallery.

For Hartles & Co, that included different groupings, compositions, crops and perspectives, as well as a combination of polished portraits and more candid-feeling imagery.

The darker environment gave the photographs a rich, contemporary feel while still keeping the finished images clean, professional and polished. Throughout the session I used the different spaces, available light and compositions to create plenty of visual variety across the gallery.

A large library of professional imagery

By the end of the session, we’d created a substantial collection covering the wider team as well as the individual people within it.

There are strong portraits where the person is the clear focus, wider environmental photographs, relaxed interactions and plenty of those in-between images that don’t feel quite as traditionally posed.

For me, that’s what makes a larger branding gallery interesting. It doesn’t need to be 100 versions of everyone smiling at the camera.