Introducing Headshot London’s new client gallery — a thank-you to the people who organise the shoot, built to give them some time back.
You found a date. You found a room. You persuaded everyone to put it in their diary.
You reminded them. You rearranged someone. You answered “What should I wear?” more times than you expected.
Then the photographer arrived, the shoot went well, and you could finally get back to your actual job.
Except there were still the photographs to distribute.
Who needs which pictures? Who has downloaded theirs? Who wants a crop? Who has a question about retouching?
If you organise team photography, you’ll recognise how easily one booking becomes a string of small jobs.
After nearly twenty years of photographing people, I wanted to do something useful about that. So I built a new client gallery for Headshot London.
You’ve done the work of getting everyone in front of our camera. Let us take some of the work off your shoulders afterwards.
Your colleagues can now collect their own photographs
This is the biggest change.
Previously, our delivery didn’t include individual browsing and downloading. We handed over the photographs, and somebody at your end had to manage their distribution.
Our new gallery gives team members a way to browse and download their own pictures. They can also arrange optional retouching and contact us directly for help.
You can still have a single download point if that suits your company’s process. But you now have a choice: keep delivery centralised, or let your colleagues take care of collecting their own photographs.
For the person who booked us, this is partly a thank-you. You trusted us with the shoot and put in the effort to make it happen. I wanted that decision to save you work further down the line.
Find yourself without scrolling through the whole company
Photographs come out of a camera in the order we take them. That isn’t necessarily the most useful order for the people looking at them.
We might photograph you against a plain background, then take some more pictures of you elsewhere later in the shoot. In a chronological gallery, your photographs could be separated by hundreds of frames of your colleagues.
So we use facial recognition to help group each person’s photographs together and reorder the gallery. Pictures taken at different points in the shoot can sit together, making it much easier to find yourself and browse your options.
The facial recognition runs on a separate machine here in our office. We don’t send your photographs to a third-party facial-recognition service for that processing.
There’s some serious technology behind it, but the benefit is straightforward: less searching, less scrolling and an easier route to your own pictures.
See who still needs to download — with faces, not filenames
Giving people a link is one thing. Knowing whether they’ve used it is another.
The organiser’s status report shows the faces of people who haven’t yet downloaded a photograph from their set. Once someone downloads at least one image, they disappear from that report.
You know your colleagues by sight. You shouldn’t need to decipher filenames to work out who still needs a reminder.
The report also shows how many people have viewed the gallery, a countdown to its deletion at the end of the ten-day window, and a button to nudge people to visit before time runs out.
You still have an overview, but everyone can take responsibility for collecting their own pictures.
I’ve heard from enough team administrators about how much effort this part can involve. This feature exists because I listened.
Need a crop? It’s included
Clients often ask me to crop their photographs. It’s usually a small job, and I’ve generally done it for free.
But even a free favour involves a message, an explanation of which photograph you mean and a wait for the result. Sometimes the request goes through the shoot organiser as well.
So I’ve automated that service in the gallery.
You can get the crop you need without asking someone to arrange it for you. It’s included, and it removes one more small task between receiving a photograph and putting it to use.
Retouching, directly from the photograph
People ask about retouching at almost every company shoot.
The company may not have included additional retouching in its booking, but an individual may still want an adjustment to their own picture. Previously, that conversation often went back through the organiser.
Now there’s a direct route.
Click “Retouch this image” on your chosen photograph, enter your name and email address, and complete the paid retouching order.
The order tells us exactly which photograph you’ve paid to have retouched and which company shoot it belongs to. We have your contact details, so we can speak to you directly about your picture.
No relaying requests through a busy colleague. No trying to describe “the one where I’m smiling a bit more”.
The person in the photograph can deal with the photographer.
The information your web team needs, ready to send
Once the photographs are ready for your website, there’s another detail to pass on: the image credit and copyright information.
The gallery includes a button to send that information to your web team for inclusion wherever the images are published. It also makes clear that copyright remains with Headshot London.
That puts the wording within reach when it’s needed, saving you another email to find, write or forward.
A question? You can reach me from the gallery
Sometimes you just need to ask someone.
There’s a WhatsApp button in the gallery so you can message me directly if you’re confused or stuck. The button is available from 8am to 7pm every day.
People don’t always look at their photographs during office hours. They might sit down with them at home, or show them to a partner or friend. I wanted the contact option to extend into the evening too.
And if a colleague needs help, they can come to me. It doesn’t have to become another question in the organiser’s inbox.
A place to tell us how we did
I’ve also included an invitation to leave a review.
Over nearly twenty years, I haven’t asked very often. Our Google review count probably gives that away.
One of the most rewarding parts of this job is seeing someone pleasantly surprised by how good they look in their photographs. Our lighting, our direction and our eye all contribute to that moment.
While you’re looking through the results seems a sensible time to ask about your experience. If you’d like to leave a review, the option is there.
A better handover, built around your time
I wanted more than a file-transfer link carrying somebody else’s branding and working to somebody else’s rules.
I wanted our service to carry through into the way you receive your photographs: the right information in the right place, useful tools close at hand and a direct connection to us.
Every feature in this gallery comes back to that idea.
Your colleagues can find their pictures together, browse, download, crop and order retouching for themselves. Your web team can get the credit information. You can see who still needs to collect their images and give them a nudge.
You booked a photographer. You shouldn’t have to become the photo helpdesk.
If organising the next team shoot is on your list, we’d love to help you make it easier — from getting everyone comfortable in front of the camera to getting the finished pictures into their hands.
Get in touch with Headshot London to discuss your team’s shoot, or see how we work on corporate headshots.
The impossible, made possible.
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