It can often be assumed that corporate portraits and headshots need to be taken with a white background. Most clients that get in touch with us will book us to come along to their offices and ask if we can bring a background as their offices are not that modern or fitted out poorly. We often would turn at their building and notice that if we captured their corporate headshots without a background we could utilise their offices by shooting the headshots on a long lens and blurred the background by having a narrow depth of field and therefore having the background out of focus. The more we did this for clients the better you become at seeing the possibilities in the colours and shapes that are created when you capture headshots this way.
Shooting images with intentional blurring caused by having areas out of focus is called Bokeh by the Japanese and as you practise this you see how colours and shapes can be adapted by the amounts of blur and exposure you employ.
The headshot below was taken in a very plain office and we blurred the background and used the light coming from the window to create the soft graduated grey effects.
The above headshot we used the blue cladding on a office building across the street and a interesting and original background.
The above was taken at office on Victoria Street and we used the corner of the window and blurred the office blinds and allowed some blue sky to come through.
Here we used a tree lined street as the background and the green from the trees creating a dappled effect and we under exposed the background.
The above was captured in a very basic one room office but the blurred effect work really well to cover over and unsightly area of the office.
Please get in touch if you would like to know more information. © Corporate Photography London.
