Why This Rare Headshot Alternative Is Sure To Make Your Website Better

"I need some headshots doing". Hear that a lot.

And I do headshots. Mighty fine ones, in fact.

But something I love more than a good headshot is a beautiful environmental portrait. Although this sounds like some sort of ecologically-conscious photoshoot, the environment in question is actually the subject's work environment. Their office. Their studio. Or, especially since Covid, their home.

Photos are supposed to tell stories. Words tell stories too, but people don't have a lot of patience for words these days. Tiktok knows that. Instagram knows that. Marcel Marceau...well he was ahead of the game. So if you can tell the story of what you do without using any words at all...well, it's a no-brainer. Enter the environmental portrait. Have a wee scroll through the ones below and see if you can work out what the subjects of each portrait do.

For those playing along, there was a watercolour painter, a barber and a sculptor. But that's not all the photos tell us. Where does the painter like to work? What's the barber's shop feel like? What sort of things does the sculptor sculpt? These, and many more questions can be answered just by looking at these images.

Now, more than ever, we're visual creatures. When we visit a website we don't want to scroll through pages of text. Tell us what you do. Tell us how you do it. Tell us quickly, but tell us well.

A headshot doesn't tell anyone what you do. It tells people what your face looks like. And don't get me wrong, you look fantastic, especially with the new haircut you got just for the shoot. But people want to know what you do: so widen that camera angle and share some of the limelight with your fantastic workspace.

Know what else is great about an environmental portrait? Hardly anyone has them. So you can stand out from the crowd: and isn't that what we all want in the business world?

To enquire about an environmental portrait session of your own get in touch.

Thanks to the subjects of these shots, respectively Mark Druery, Martin Young, and Lucy Churchill