On-site in the Square Mile
Most City buildings want photo ID a week before I arrive: full name, company, sometimes a scan of the ID itself sent to building security. Skip this step and I am stuck in reception while someone tracks down a fob. Towers around Bishopsgate and Leadenhall run their own version of the same process, and I would rather over-prepare than lose the first twenty minutes of a booking to it.
A security escort is standard in most towers, from the barriers up to whichever floor holds the meeting room. Goods lifts matter more than people expect: passenger lifts get busy at 9am, and I’ve queued three deep with lighting stands more than once. Some lobbies, particularly the older ones around Cornhill, do not allow a tripod at all, so I shoot handheld with a 24-70 and bounce flash off the ceiling instead. It looks identical in the final image, it just costs me a bit more thought at setup.
Loading bays close their windows around 8am sharp, before the working day properly starts, which is the one deadline that isn’t negotiable. For headshots from £150, this is the level of detail that keeps a City morning on schedule. I shoot across the Square Mile every month, alongside wider East London coverage, and recent work across London shows the range of buildings I have worked in.
What you get
An individual sitting gets three to five retouched images from a twenty-minute slot. Teams work the same way, just faster: once the room is set up, I can photograph twelve to fifteen people an hour, each getting a quick look-and-approve moment at the back of the camera before moving on.
Retouching is standard on every image: skin evened out, stray hairs tidied, nothing that would not be gone within a fortnight anyway. I won’t reshape a jaw or slim anyone down, at any price. The photo needs to look like the person walking into a meeting, not a smoothed-over version of them.
Pricing drops per head as the group grows, because setup and travel get shared across more people rather than repeated for each one. See full pricing across every service for how this compares with the rest of what I shoot.
| Group size | Price per person |
|---|---|
| Individual | £150 |
| 2–4 people | £120 per person |
| 5–9 people | £95 per person |
| 10 or more | £60–£110 per person |
Booking around a City working day
Nobody in a City firm gives you a spare hour. What works instead is twenty-minute slots against a named order, circulated the week before, so people know exactly when to leave their desk rather than hovering by the door “sometime after lunch.” I’ve watched a loose queue eat forty minutes that a proper list would have saved.
I book the room from 8am, even if the first sitting is not until nine. Setup takes about forty minutes — backdrop, lighting, a test shot against the wall you will actually be using — and starting before anyone arrives means the first three names on the list are not shot half-lit while I am still adjusting a stand.
For a trading floor or anything above twenty people, an all-day station beats a morning block every time, even though it looks like more hours on the invoice. A morning-only booking often means a second setup in the afternoon for stragglers, which costs more in the end than paying for the extra time upfront. I would rather say that plainly than let a client find out the expensive way.
Compliance, insurance and procurement
Most City firms ask for the same things before they will let anyone through security: a public liability certificate, occasionally a signed NDA, and once in a while a DBS check if the shoot touches a regulated floor. I send the certificate as a matter of course with every booking confirmation, so it is sitting in someone’s inbox rather than being chased on the morning of the shoot.
An NDA is usually a formality, a standard confidentiality clause covering what I see on the premises rather than anything unusual, and I’ll sign whatever a firm’s legal team sends over provided it arrives with enough notice to read properly. A DBS check takes longer to arrange than either of those, so flag it as early as you can if your compliance team requires one. Procurement teams move at their own pace, and mine is not faster than theirs.
When you don’t need me to come to you
Fewer than six people is a studio job, not an on-site one. Clearing a meeting room, booking a lift slot and covering the security process for four people costs more than it saves, and my Shoreditch studio already has the backdrop and lighting set up permanently. I would rather say that upfront than invoice you for logistics you don’t need.
The number six is not a hard line. It is really about whether the travel and setup cost outweighs what a handful of people save by not leaving the building. Past roughly six or seven, the maths flips, and coming to you starts making sense.
Send me the team size and a preferred week. Then tell me the date and the postcode and I will confirm access requirements and timings within one working day.