Made for East London brands
Most branding shoots I book here come from three kinds of client: a founder still doing everything, a small agency briefing a shoot for someone else’s launch, and independent brands where the person is the product. None of them want stiff, backlit corporate portraits. They want images that look like the business feels, with a bit of mess on the desk and a laptop that has clearly been used.
That changes how I shoot: less posing, more working frames, someone answering an email, packing an order, holding a sample up to the window light. There’s still a clean headshot crop for a bio page, but most of the value sits either side of it, where a customer or investor sees what a day here looks like.
Redchurch Street gives colour and texture without trying. Ebor Street’s murals read as East London without being a cliché, for now. A flat above a shop on Rivington Street gives a working desk and good window light, with none of the usual office beige. That mix, pulled together across a full day, does more for a brand than an hour in a rented studio. This is the shape of a full branding shoot from £600.
What you get
A half day covers one location, one wardrobe change and two to three hours of shooting, delivered as forty to fifty edited images. A full day adds a second location and wardrobe change, plus time for workspace, product and detail shots alongside portraits, sixty to a hundred images by the end.
Retainers suit brands updating their site or socials every few months rather than once a year. Three shoots across twelve months cost less per session than booking separately, and the look stays consistent, so the brand doesn’t visibly change photographer halfway through the year.
| Package | What’s included | From |
|---|---|---|
| Half day | One location, one wardrobe change, 40–50 edited images | £600 |
| Full day | Two locations, two wardrobe changes, 60–100 edited images | £950–£1,200 |
| Extra location | Added to a half or full day booking | £150 |
| Video add-on | Short brand or reel footage shot alongside stills | £400 |
| Ongoing retainer | Three half-day shoots across twelve months | £1,500 |
Everything here sits inside a wider price list. See full pricing across every service if you are comparing this against video, headshots or product photography.
Locations within ten minutes
Six spots I come back to most, all inside a ten-minute walk of the studio:
- Arnold Circus: even shade under the trees for most of the day
- Redchurch Street: colour and texture, best before 9am
- Ebor Street: mural backdrops, same timing rule
- Columbia Road: only works on a Sunday, when the flower market runs
- Rivington Street: genuine graffiti, if that is the look you want
- Hoxton Square: reliable, but the most photographed spot in the area
Direct midday sun is the hardest light to shoot in, whatever the golden hour advice says, so I lean on tree cover over open squares. Hoxton Square photographs fine, but it’s stood behind a lot of other founder portraits by now, and I’d rather find you somewhere less familiar. Rivington Street still has real graffiti if that’s the look you want, though a plain brick wall or your actual desk usually says more about the business than a mural does.
A location you recognise as yours beats a famous one. I pull from wider East London coverage if none of these fit, and recent work across London shows how the same streets read differently depending on the season and the light.
Planning a day here
Send a one-page shot list before the day, built around where the images will be used: home page, LinkedIn, a press kit, a pitch deck. That decision changes the lens I bring, how tight I crop and whether I bother with a tripod in some of the smaller flats and offices around here, where there’s often no room to swing one.
Two wardrobe changes and two locations make a realistic full day. Three starts to feel rushed, and rushed portraits look rushed. I usually build in one coffee stop early on, partly a natural second setting, partly because starting before 10am beats the foot traffic and, from October, light that goes flat under grey cloud fast.
If the day involves a period building or a converted warehouse with no lift, say so in advance and the kit list gets planned around stairs. September and October evenings lose light by 7pm most days, so afternoon bookings get scheduled with that in mind.
When you need a headshot instead
About a third of the founders who get in touch asking for a branding shoot need one good portrait, for a LinkedIn profile, an about page or a speaker bio. If that’s genuinely all it is, book the headshot service instead. It costs £150, takes under an hour and gets a proper studio-quality image without paying for workspace and product shots you won’t use.
A branding shoot earns its price across a website and social output over several months. For one photo on one page, it doesn’t. I’d rather say that upfront than sell you a half day you didn’t need.
Tell me the date and the postcode and I’ll confirm availability within one working day, then talk through timings before we shoot.