Boban James

Editorial Style Corporate Portraits for Hines

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of being approached to create some corporate portraits for the Asia Pacific Leadership team of Hines, a global real estate investment management firm. The Asia Pacific leadership was flying into Singapore for a regional  summit, and the Communications team at Hines thought it a good opportunity to do some portraits  while the leadership team was in town.
The brief that I was given was to shoot editorial style portraits within the Hines office (which was out of a coworking space) and also at the Ritz Carlton hotel where they had booked a suite for the photoshoot.
As a professional portrait photographer, I love working on shoots like this where I am given a bit of creative liberty. 
Our first location was a coworking space at Marina One where the Hines team was temporarily based out of. 
The interiors were a bit limited in terms of photographic possibilities, so we decided to make use of the stunning view outside the tall windows. We opted to place our portrait subject in the gap between the buildings, so that she didn't get 'lost' in the maze of buildings behind her. 


For our next portrait subject, the client wanted a more minimalistic feel. I was drawn to the blue wall and thought it would make for an interesting contrast with the grey suit of the subject. I made sure to leave some negative space to the left of the client in case they wanted to fill it with text for a press release.

To get a more editorial vibe for some of the other leaders, the client had also booked a suite at the Ritz Carlton. I've photographed from many high vantage points in Singapore, but the view from the Ritz Carlton Singapore was stunning! The only sad part was that it was a rainy day and the city backdrop wasn't as clear as we would have liked it to be, and the skies were also heavily overcast. Well, c'est la vie. Commercial portrait photography is always about problem solving, and one just learns to adapt to whatever the environment throws.

In these kinds of shoots with busy senior leaders, there’s always time pressure on the photographer to quickly set up the lights and figure out the best angles for the shot. With my trusty assistant Lin standing in, we did several test setups with our lights. The challenge with a space with such large windows is always one of getting enough light on the portrait subject so that it looks balanced in comparison with the backdrop, without it looking too “flashlike”. And then there's the challenge of making sure that the lights don't show up in the window reflection. But these challenges are what make these shoots interesting and fun!

This corporate portrait shoot challenged me in a good way- my thanks to my clients from Hines for giving me the opportunity!

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