Most of the people who organise team headshots in NYC are not photographers. They are an office manager, a marketing lead, or whoever drew the short straw, and they have been asked to get thirty people photographed without derailing a working day. This is what that day actually looks like, so you can plan it properly.
The space you need
Less than you think, but not nothing. A conference room works, so does a corner of an open floor, and so does a wide corridor at a push. What matters is depth: I need roughly ten to twelve feet between the camera and the wall so the person can stand away from the background and the background can go soft.
A room with a window is a bonus, not a requirement. I bring lighting, so a windowless room is fine and is often easier because the light does not change halfway through the morning. What genuinely helps is a room with a door, since people relax more when the rest of the office is not watching.
Give me thirty to forty minutes before the first person to set up, and plan for the room to be unavailable for the whole booking. Nothing slows a headshot day down like packing up for a 2pm meeting.
Backdrop or office?
Two choices, and it is worth deciding before the day rather than during it.
A clean backdrop, usually grey or white, gives you a set of portraits that will still match in two years when you photograph the next four hires. It cuts out cleanly for a website and it works on every layout. This is what most companies want for a team page.
Shooting in the actual office gives you something with more character: glass, brick, a bit of the space in the background. It photographs beautifully and it says something about the company. The trade-off is that it is harder to match later, and if you move offices the whole set is dated.
You can do both. The usual approach is a clean version for the website plus a looser environmental frame for LinkedIn and press, which takes only a couple of extra minutes per person.
Scheduling: the part that decides everything
Book people into slots, do not tell the team to drop by. A shared calendar with named slots is the single biggest difference between a smooth day and a day where twelve people arrive at once at 11:45.
As a rough guide, allow around ten minutes per person for a standard set, and a bit more for anyone who needs multiple looks. That covers getting them comfortable, working through a few expressions, and checking the frames on the back of the camera. Some people are done in five. Nobody is good in the first thirty seconds, which is why I do not book five-minute slots.
Build in a break every couple of hours, keep a couple of empty slots in the afternoon for the inevitable person who was on a call, and put the most senior people mid-morning rather than first. By slot three or four the rhythm is right.
What to tell your team beforehand
Send one short email a week out. Keep it to the useful things:
Solid colours photograph better than patterns, and mid to dark tones sit well against a light background. Avoid tight stripes and small checks, which can shimmer on screen. Bring a jacket or a second layer even if you do not plan to wear it, because it gives an easy second look.
Come as you would to an important client meeting rather than as a different person. A headshot that does not look like you is a problem the first time someone meets you at reception.
Ask people to bring a lint roller or leave one in the room, and mention that hair looks the way it looks in the photo, so a mirror by the door earns its place. There is a longer version of all of this in the guide on what to wear for headshots, which you are welcome to forward.
Keeping thirty people consistent
Consistency is the whole point of a team set, and it comes from three things staying fixed: the light, the background, and the crop. If those hold, thirty portraits sit next to each other on a website and look like one company rather than thirty separate sessions.
It also means the edit has to match. Skin gets treated the same way for everyone, the background stays the same tone, and nobody comes out looking noticeably more processed than the person beside them. I go into how I handle that in how I edit headshots.
Keep a note of the setup for the next round. When you hire four people in March, matching them to the existing set is straightforward if the details were recorded, and close to impossible if they were not.
Remote and hybrid teams
Most companies now have people who are not in the building. The practical options are to run the on-site day for whoever is in town and add a short second date around a quarterly all-hands, or to photograph remote staff separately against the same background so they still match.
What does not work is asking remote staff to send a photo they took at home. You will see the difference immediately on the team page, and so will everyone else.
After the day
Everyone gets to see their own frames and choose, which matters more than people expect. Being handed a portrait you did not pick is the reason so many staff quietly refuse to update their photo.
Edited images arrive in a private gallery, generally within five to seven business days and always within fourteen, with files sized for both a website and LinkedIn. Whoever manages the site gets one link with everything in it rather than thirty email attachments.
Pricing for a team scales with headcount, location and how fast you need the files, so there is a corporate catalogue rather than a single number. Tell me roughly how many people, where you are, and the date you have in mind, and I will send it over. The headshots page has the individual session options, and you can get in touch here.