How to Give an Award

How to Give an Award

Alternately titled:

Giving awards with your photographer in mind

Recognizing your team by giving awards is an important way of expressing the value your company places on achievements or other contributions. Sharing these moments on the company website or newsletter or press release is an important way of sharing. With just a little bit of foresight you can improve the odds of getting great photos of your award presentation.

You might be the presenter. Your might be the event coordinator, needing to “coach” the presenter. Whatever your situation, you probably want usable photographs of the award presentations or you wouldn’t be reading this article. We have witnessed great award presentations and hopeless ones (from the point of view of the photographer), so here are a few tips.

Read more

Our Policy on Archiving Your Images

detail of hard drive data storage devices

Archiving: Our Policy

First, a quick caveat:

This is our Policy, not a Guarantee

With that out of the way, with a mutual understanding that bad things can happen to good data, you can be assured that to the best of our ability we archive all the work we produce.

In the days of film we saved negatives. When we made the transition to digital we saw no reason (or justification) for discarding images.

In the specific case of portraits, we also archive the additional images in addition to the selected images.

The images we produce for you are still yours – we don’t release them to outside parties or stock agencies.

However, it does now and then happen that months or years after a picture is taken, a need arises for a different size or crop. It does occasionally happen that a subject wants to review his or her options later, after the portrait sitting. It does sometimes happen that a client will accidentally delete, misplace, or overwrite a file.

For those reasons and others, we do our best to maintain copies of the images we produce for you.

We don’t charge extra for this service. We feel it’s a professional courtesy. We don’t have to reach into our archive every day, or even every week. But when we do it’s usually in response to a distress call, and the party on the other end of the phone or email is grateful and relieved when we can produce the missing or damaged resource.

This is one important advantage to having and maintaining a long term relationship with a vendor such as FayFoto Boston. We want the best for you and your marketing/communication efforts.

What to wear for a business head shot portrait

collage of various business portrait wardrobe choices

What to wear for a business portrait

This is probably our second most asked question (second only to “what will it cost?” and maybe “when are you available?”).

We only have one universal response, and that is “unless your work attire demands it, avoid solid white.” If you are a chef or a lab technician or a physician you might need to wear solid white. Otherwise, if you don’t need to, please don’t. Getting a good exposure for a normal complexion generally causes solid white garments to wash out. That being said, a white shirt or blouse or dress under a darker jacket is almost always fine.

I’ll get into some more detail in a moment, but our second generalized response is “wear something you feel good in.” Seriously, if you’re feeling good – confident and professional – that will reflect in the appearance you project.

Read more

Headshot Business Portraits: How it Works

location portrait lighting setup

How it Works: Portraits

You may have worked with other commercial photographers in the past. Or, you may not have and you have no idea what to expect. Either way, this article will outline what to expect if you hire FayFoto Boston for a business portrait, or “headshot” assignment.

(Note: While we certainly work directly with individuals in need of a head shot or business portrait, the bulk of our interactions are with marketing or practice development staff, or with executive AAs. The tone of this article reflects that orientation.)

The first half of this article deals specifically with sessions conducted in your office. The second half applies equally to location assignments and sessions in our Brighton studio. The former is more convenient for your personnel. The latter is more economical. If you have any doubts as to whether to send your people to us or ask us to come to you, please get in touch. Outline your needs, and ask us for a quote.

Read more

How to book a portrait assignment

How to book a portrait assignment

We try hard to make it easy for you to work with FayFoto but there are a few things to be aware of when setting up an assignment. This article will focus on setting up a headshot portrait session at your office, but much of the information applies to assignments of other types. (Note: Portraits in our Brighton studio don't require setup time.)

Details Matter

With a little attention given to clarifying a few critical details, arranging for a photo shoot at your office becomes a lot easier. Here's a little script:

The x-Company would like to arrange a photo shoot for x-Number of employees on x-Date at x-Time (am/pm).

That was easy, wasn't it? So here's a little additional information. It takes us 20-30 minutes to set up, so when you specify a time we'll invariably ask "is that ready-at or arrive-at?" For example, if you state that 10:00 am is the ready-at time (meaning when the first subject has been told to show up), we'll probably arrive at your office by about 9:30.

Read more