On-location business headshots in North Van

I’m extremely fortunate to say that I get to photograph the loveliest human beings, and this on-location business photo shoot was no exception.

Article about Kim and James, co-owners of Pizza Pizza in North Vancouver, featured in Canadian Franchise Magazine Sept/Oct 2021 edition. Photos by Laura Shortt Photography.

If your familiar with my work, you know that most of the time when a person books a photo shoot with me, it happens at my photo studio in East Vancouver (including boudoir and glamour sessions, headshot photo shoots, family portrait sessions- heck, even the occasional pet portrait session happens at the studio).

While I love getting to do these sessions at the studio, I also relish getting to go into new environments for on-location photo shoots on occasion. So as you can imagine, my heart skipped a beat when James and Kim, co-owners of Pizza Pizza in North Vancouver, contacted me about doing a photo shoot at their business.

As co-owners of a successful franchise, James and Kim were about to be featured in an article by national publication Canadian Franchise Magazine and they needed a photographer to get some action photography shots of them in their business. They also requested a more traditional, studio-looking headshot for each of them (also shot on-location) that they could use on LinkedIn.

To say I had fun photographing these two is an understatement. They both told me beforehand that they’re not photogenic/don’t enjoy being photographed, which is a not-uncommon comment from people (until they have had the experience of being photographed by me at least 😉).

For their on-location business photo shoot, I used a combination of natural light and artificial light. I love using natural light, but to get that commercial ‘kick’ to the photos that you see in magazines, a strobe is definitely needed. I used a Profoto B1 to give me that extra umph/very polished lighting look to the photos and I’m very happy with the results.

James and Kim did such a great job posing for these portraits. Yes, I gave them lots of direction (as I do with everyone who gets in front of my camera), but what makes these portraits successful is that both of them were willing to open up and give me genuine expressions and smiles. Did I tell a few ridiculous jokes along the way to help loosen them up? You betcha…

In addition to the business portraits we did for the Canadian Franchise Magazine, Kim and James also asked if I could do two more traditional corporate headshots that would be suitable for LinkedIn. They referenced another headshot photo on my website that they wanted to use for inspiration. The particular headshot they were interested in recreating was shot in all natural light, and lucky for me their Pizza Pizza location had awesome big windows so it was relatively simple to recreate the look. For any fellow photographers in the room, this was done with a black v-flat positioned behind the subject as a backdrop, with the other side of the v-flat wrapping around camera left to create some negative fill/add some extra dimension to the face through use of shadows. The light came through some big windows camera right and it was early enough in the day that it was indirect lighting. Because it was indirect/nice and soft, no diffusion material was required.

Thank you so much to Pizza Pizza, Canadian Franchise Magazine and Kim and James for this wonderful opportunity!