Photography Tips · Brussels
Executive and Leadership Portraits: What to Know Before Booking
An executive portrait is built to be reproduced large, appear in contexts you don't control, and often stand in as the only image a journalist or event organiser has of your company. That changes almost everything about how it should be shot.
A different job than a team headshot
A team headshot answers "who works here." An executive portrait answers a bigger question, because it travels further: it goes on the leadership page, the annual report, press releases, conference programmes. It gets cropped, enlarged, and placed next to text nobody consulted you about. Treating it like a slightly nicer version of a regular headshot is the mistake that shows up two years later, when the only usable photo of your CEO is a low-resolution square crop from LinkedIn.
What the frame actually needs to do
The requirements are practical, not artistic. The frame needs deliberate empty space so a layout designer can place text over it without cropping into a face. It needs a horizontal version, because programmes and article headers are horizontal, not square. It needs enough resolution to survive print, not just a screen. And it needs to be neutral enough to sit against a dark brand palette one year and a light one the next, without looking like it was designed for the wrong company.
Office or studio — and why office usually wins
A portrait taken in the actual working environment is harder to date and reads less like stock photography than a studio backdrop. We bring lighting, so the room doesn't need windows or a particular layout — it needs a wall and about twenty minutes of somebody's calendar. This also solves a logistics problem: senior people rarely have an hour to travel to a studio, but they can usually find twenty minutes at their own desk.
Sessions are short by design
In practice the session itself is compressed: a defined set of frames, shot in a fixed sequence, in the office or in a studio. What actually takes time isn't the photography — it's agreeing beforehand where the portrait will be used, because that decision determines the framing before anyone picks up a camera. A brief conversation up front replaces an open-ended session nobody has time for.
Usage rights that hold up in the press
Usage rights for corporate communications and press are included and stated in writing, so nobody on your team has to ask permission before a publication runs the photo. This is worth checking with any photographer before booking — an unclear usage clause is the single most common source of trouble months after a session, usually right when a journalist is on deadline.
When someone genuinely doesn't like being photographed
This is common, not rare, and it's workable. A short, structured session with a defined shot list is far easier for a reluctant subject than an open-ended creative shoot with no clear endpoint. Knowing the whole thing will be over in twenty minutes changes how people sit, and it usually produces a better portrait than a longer session spent trying to get someone to relax.
How often these actually need updating
The honest triggers are a role change, a company rebrand, a visibly different appearance, or roughly every three to four years as a default. But the most common real-world trigger is none of those: someone else published a photograph of your executive that the leadership team didn't like, and there was nothing better on file to send instead.
A realistic market quote for an executive portrait session — including a horizontal press-ready version and written usage rights — typically falls between 350€ and 900€, depending on the number of contexts the portrait has to serve and how many executives are photographed in one visit.
Need a portrait your leadership team can use everywhere?
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