Business portrait photography in Norwich City Centre for a man who reads people for a living.
Danny Kett spent his police career as an Inspector and hostage negotiator.
These days he’s Dr Danny Kett, and he runs Rebelbridge Studio, a behavioural science consultancy that works with leaders on judgement and decision-making when the pressure is on.
He came to me for business portrait photography in Norwich that he could use across his website, promotional material and social media, with enough left over to send to publications and professional papers whenever someone asks for a picture.
He told me two things before we started.
He’d not done much of this before and wasn’t comfortable being the one in front of the camera. And he didn’t want anything that looked posed or too contrived. His comfort zone and a professional angle needed to be retained.
That second point carries more weight for Danny than for most clients. His business is about how people really behave.
The people who hire a behavioural scientist tend to notice when something’s off, and a man holding a smile he doesn’t mean is off. If his pictures looked staged, they’d be arguing against his own work.
I was a police sergeant before I was a photographer, so we weren’t short of things to talk about. That did more for the pictures than any posing guide.
How the session worked
We met in Norwich with a camper van, a few changes of clothes and no fixed route. I had one camera and two lenses.
No lights, no reflectors, no assistant. We walked and talked, and I stopped him wherever the light was doing something useful.
Finding that light is most of the job. I’m not looking for somewhere bright. I’m looking for direction, light coming in from one side so the other side of the face falls into shadow and you get some shape.
The shaded side of a lane does it. So does a doorway, or a table near a café window. None of it is trying to copy a studio. Studio light outdoors looks like studio light outdoors.
There are jobs where lighting is the right call and I’ll bring it. This wasn’t one.
Lights would have needed carrying and rigging at every stop, and nobody’s putting stands up in a working coffee shop or on a cobbled lane with people walking through.
We’d have managed three locations instead of. six. Danny would have spent the morning standing on a mark waiting for me, which is the last thing someone nervous of the camera needs.
What a client ends up with matters a great deal more than what I turned up carrying, and on a session like this, extra kit usually costs you pictures.
Walking gives people something to do with their body. Talking takes care of the face. Most of the frames Danny has ended up with were taken mid-sentence or just after one.
Matching the business portrait photography to what Rebelbridge Studio does
A good picture of Danny isn’t enough on its own. Call it business portrait photography or personal branding photography, the pictures have to tell a stranger something true about how the person works. So it’s worth going through the set against the business.
We started on a footbridge with the cathedral spire behind him. With a company called Rebelbridge I wasn’t going to walk past it. One frame has him small in the middle of the bridge with clear space all round, which is a homepage banner with room for a headline.
Rebelbridge offers one-to-one executive coaching. So there are frames in a café, shot over the shoulder of the person he’s talking to, with Danny listening. That’s what a coaching client will see across the table. For a former negotiator, listening is the skill, and a headshot against a grey backdrop can’t show it.
Then there’s the navy three piece suit on the cobbles of [CHECK: Elm Hill]. That’s the formal end, for leadership teams, conference programmes and proposals. But he’s still outdoors with his hands in his pockets, so he’s recognisably the same person as the one in the red jumper leaning by a teal door with his phone. That matters. Someone who finds him on LinkedIn in a jumper and then meets him in a suit should feel they’ve already met him. I’ve written before about getting formal headshots and natural portraits out of the same shoot, and the same thinking applies to one person as it does to a team.
The darker frames against the green wall do a different job. They were taken on the shadow side of the street with light from one side only, and they’re more serious without Danny having to pull a serious face. His work is about high-pressure environments. When a publication runs a piece on that subject, those are the ones I’d expect a picture editor to pick.
The last set is him sitting inside under a warm lamp, hand to his chin, thinking. That’s the author picture for the research side of what he does, for papers, journals and speaker biographies.
Danny’s own framework is the POD Method: Potential, Opportunity and Desire as the drivers of behaviour. I’ll leave the proper explanation to him. It did strike me that it describes a portrait session quite well. The potential was there from the off, because he’s got plenty to say and a face that shows it. The opportunity was the light and the streets. And he wanted to be there, which you can’t fake and I can’t add afterwards.
What Business Portrait Photography he came away with
Around 50 finished images from one morning, three outfits and 5 locations.
We don’t over edit. Why, because people need to be recognised for who they are. It’s not about putting filters on a business portrait photography. Professional portraits should reflect who the person really is when you meet them.
Each style delivered in landscape, High res and Low res, landscape and and a 2:3 or 4:5 crop, so they drop straight into a website, a printed page or a LinkedIn and Instagram feed without anyone having to chop them about.
There’s enough range that he can post for a year without repeating himself, and still send a magazine something that isn’t already on his homepage.
Business portrait photography in Norwich and beyond
If you’re the product, whether that’s as a consultant, coach, adviser or speaker, this is how I’d suggest doing it.
Tell me what you do and where the pictures are going, bring a few changes of clothes, and keep a morning free.
There’s more about how I work as a Norwich portrait photographer here, and if it’s a whole team you need photographing, the corporate headshots page is the place to start.
studio@blanc-creative.com or 07871 364041.
