On-site in the towers
Canary Wharf’s towers don’t let you turn up and shoot. Most buildings need visitors pre-registered a day or two ahead, photo ID matched at reception, and a pass issued before anyone goes near a lift. A 9am booking means being in the lobby at 8.15, not 8.55, because the walk from ground-floor security to a floor-plate office with an escort can take twenty minutes on its own.
- Names and photo ID details sent to your building at least three working days ahead
- A confirmed room booking, ideally held for the full day
- My kit cleared through security in advance, if the building asks for it
I confirm each building’s current requirements before every booking, since one tower’s rules rarely match another’s, and both change more often than you would expect. Floor-plate offices bring a second problem: floor-to-ceiling glass on two, sometimes three sides, which reads as a gift until the sun comes straight through it at 11am.
I shoot headshots from £150 across London, and my studio in Shoreditch sits ten minutes away on the DLR, so this postcode is part of my normal wider East London coverage. Recent work across London includes several sittings shot in offices much like these.
What you get
An individual sitting is £150. Small groups and full teams both bring the per-head price down, and the table below sets out what changes as the numbers grow.
| Booking | What’s included | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Individual session | 20–30 minutes, 3–5 retouched images | £150 |
| Team of two to four | One backdrop, back-to-back slots | £120 per person |
| Team of five to nine | One room, named schedule | £95 per person |
| Team of ten or more | 12–15 people an hour once set up | £60–£110 per person |
Every sitting includes standard retouching and images delivered within 48 hours. See full pricing across every service for how this compares with everything else I shoot, including corporate and event work booked on the same day.
Light in a glass building
Most photography advice treats a wall of window light as free and flattering. I’d disagree for headshots in a tower: at 11am it blows out everything behind the subject, the camera meters for the bright window, and the face in front of it drops into shadow. The fix isn’t more light on the subject. It is turning the setup around, so the glass sits behind the camera rather than behind the person being photographed.
Done well, that same window becomes a soft source rather than a background problem, not unlike a studio softbox once it is diffused by cloud or angled away from direct sun. North- and east-facing floors stay usable for longer through the middle of the day. South- and west-facing ones turn harsh from late morning and need a backdrop, or a step back into the room’s interior instead.
I bring a portable backdrop for exactly this reason, since not every floor gives me a wall worth using. Ask which way your floor faces, and I will tell you in advance whether the light needs managing or the room will do the work for us.
Scheduling a large team
Named slots beat a queue every time. Twenty minutes each, in a fixed order sent to me the day before, keeps the line moving and stops people drifting off for what turns into forty minutes. I hold the room for the whole day rather than a fixed window, because teams rarely arrive exactly on schedule.
- A meeting room booked and held all day, not released back to general use at noon
- A name list checked the morning of the shoot, not the week before it
- A backup slot for anyone working from home that day
What goes wrong, reliably: a room reclaimed at noon because nobody flagged it as held, or a Friday where half the team works from home and the numbers on the day don’t match the list sent over. Both are avoidable with the checklist above.
When the studio is the better option
Under six people, I’d book the studio rather than clear a meeting room. The lighting is fixed and consistent, there’s no chance of a room getting reclaimed mid-session, and travel for six people to Shoreditch costs less time overall than forty minutes of my setup and pack-down on-site.
The same goes for a team scattered across three floors with no single room big enough to hold everyone. Coordinating passes and escorts between floors eats more time than the shoot itself, and a studio slot booked in shifts is usually quicker end to end. For six or fewer, or a team split across floors, ask about studio sittings before booking me into the building.
Tell me the date and the postcode and I’ll confirm what your building needs from you before the day. I reply within one working day.