Go to the team page of almost any company in Boston or New York with more than thirty employees. The first ten headshots match. Then there’s one with a different background. Then one that’s clearly a cropped wedding photo. Then a founder from 2019 with a haircut he no longer has. Then two people photographed by a different corporate headshot photographer, on a different day, in a different city, with different lighting.

Nobody planned this. It’s what happens to company headshots by default.

How headshots drift

The original headshot day was organized. A photographer came to the office, set up in a conference room, and photographed everyone in a consistent style. It looked good for about four months.

Then hiring happened. New employees needed headshots and there was no photographer scheduled, so they used whatever they had. Someone in the New York office got theirs done locally. Someone in marketing grabbed a photo from a conference. A senior hire came with a headshot from her last firm, which had a different look entirely. Two years later, the team page is a collage.

The problem isn’t any one headshot. It’s that nobody owns consistency, and consistency is the entire point of a corporate headshot.

What mismatched headshots communicate

A team page is one of the most visited pages on a company’s website, and it’s read by exactly the people you’re trying to impress: prospective clients, candidates, investors, press. A consistent set of headshots says the company pays attention to details and presents itself deliberately. A mismatched set says the opposite, quietly, to everyone who lands on the page.

Candidates notice. So do clients in fields where polish matters: law firms, financial services, architecture, consulting, biotech. Nobody will tell you that your headshots cost you a client. It doesn’t work that way. It just contributes to an impression, and the impression compounds.

The fix is a system, not a reshoot

You don’t need to photograph everyone again. You need three things.

A documented setup. Background, lighting, crop, expression, framing, and file spec, written down so any photographer can reproduce it. A good corporate headshot photographer will give you this after the first session; ask for it. I keep the setup on file for every company I photograph so new-hire headshots taken a year later match the originals.

A recurring session. Quarterly or twice a year, depending on hiring volume, the photographer comes back for an hour or two and photographs everyone who’s joined. 

One owner. Someone in HR, marketing, or office operations who’s responsible for the team page and knows that new headshots come from the recurring session, not from wherever the employee found one.

Multi-office companies

Companies with offices in both Boston and New York City often end up with two headshot looks, one per city, because they hired a photographer in each. If a single photographer can cover both offices, that solves it. If not, the documented setup is what makes two photographers produce one look.

The founder headshot from 2019

Replace it. Executives resist updating their headshots for the same reason everyone does, and the result is a leadership page that doesn’t match the people who show up to the meeting. A headshot older than three years should be redone. Older than five, it’s a liability.

Evan Scales photographs corporate headshots, executive portraits, and workplace photography for companies in Boston and New York City, and works with independent schools, universities, and healthcare organizations across the Northeast.