Studio vs
On-Location Headshots.

The question isn't which produces a better photograph. With a portable studio kit, the lighting is the same either way and so is the backdrop. The question is who travels — you to us, or us to you — and that turns out to decide cost, scheduling and how consistent a team's photos look far more than it decides image quality.

The short answer

If you're one person, book the studio. If you're a team of eight or more in one building, book on-location. Almost every case that isn't obvious sits between those two numbers, and the deciding factor is usually calendars rather than photography.

• One or two people: studio. It's cheaper, the setup is already built, and there's room to change lighting between looks.
• Three to seven people: either. Compare the cost of the individual sessions against a half-day on site, and factor in how much working time you lose sending people across the city.
• Eight or more, one office: on-location, almost always. The travel cost is fixed and the per-person cost falls as the day fills.
• A distributed team: a mix — see the consistency section below, because this is the case that goes wrong.

What actually changes, and what doesn't

The most common worry about an office shoot is that it will look like an office shoot. It doesn't, because we don't use the office. What comes to your boardroom is a full portable studio — the same kind of strobes, modifiers and seamless backdrop used at 170 Sumach St — so the light on your face is built rather than borrowed. A headshot is a tight crop; the room behind the backdrop never appears in it.

What does change is room to work. The studio has ceiling height, distance behind the subject, and space to move a light and change the whole character of the photo in thirty seconds. A boardroom with the table pushed against a wall has one workable arrangement, and we build it once and keep it. That's an advantage for a team — everyone gets the same photo — and a limitation for a single portrait where you want two or three genuinely different looks.

The other thing that changes is quiet. Some people relax the moment they're out of the building; others tense up the second they walk into a photography studio. Neither reaction is rare, and neither is worth paying extra to accommodate.

The time arithmetic

A studio session is booked by the session: 20 minutes for a Mini, 45 for a Professional, two hours for an Executive sitting. Add travel at both ends and one person spends most of a half-day on it. That's fine for one person. For twelve, it's six lost half-days, plus the scheduling work of getting twelve people to book anything.

On site, the arithmetic inverts. Setup takes about 45 minutes before the first person sits down, and after that a rotation runs at roughly 15 to 25 people an hour per photographer, depending on how much direction each person needs. Staff leave their desks for five minutes and come back. Nobody books travel. If your team is large enough that the setup time amortises, on-location wins on time before it wins on anything else — the mechanics of running that rotation are covered in planning a company-wide headshot day.

Consistency, and the distributed-team problem

An about page where eleven people were photographed the same way and three weren't is worse than one where nobody was. The eye finds the mismatch immediately, and the three odd images read as newer, cheaper or less senior regardless of who's in them.

A single on-location day solves this by force: same room, same light, same afternoon. The harder case is a team split across offices, or half remote. There, the answer is to fix the specification rather than the location — one backdrop tone, one crop ratio, one lighting direction — and shoot to it wherever each person happens to be. We keep those settings on file, so a person photographed at the studio in November matches the twenty photographed at your office in September. Choosing that backdrop tone deliberately, rather than defaulting to whatever grey is nearest, is worth ten minutes: see headshot background colours.

The one thing you can't fix afterwards is mixed lighting direction. Retouching can nudge tone and crop; it can't move where the light came from.

What each costs

Studio sessions are priced per person: $250 for a Mini, $385 for a Professional, $550 for an Executive session, which includes on-location anywhere in the GTA. Full details are on the pricing page.

Teams are quoted as a day rate rather than a stack of sessions, starting from around $125 per person at 20 or more people, with one retouched image each and additional retouched images at $50. The crossover point is where a day rate beats the same headcount booked individually, and for most teams that's somewhere between eight and twelve people. Below that, the studio is usually cheaper; above it, the office day usually is — before counting the working hours you don't lose. Corporate and team headshots covers what a day includes.

Delivery doesn't change between the two. Retouched images go out within 24 hours as a Google Drive link, organised by person, with web-optimized and full high-resolution versions. That's standard on every session rather than a rush tier.

How to choose in one minute

• Book the studio if: it's one or two people; you want more than one look; you don't have a room with two clear metres behind a person; or the photo is for you rather than for a company page. The studio is at 170 Sumach St in Regent Park — details and directions are on the contact page.
• Book on-location if: you have eight or more people in one building; the images have to match each other; getting people out of the office is the actual obstacle; or you're photographing executives whose calendars are the constraint, which is the usual case in executive headshots.
• Do both if: your team is distributed. Run one on-location day for the main office, then send stragglers to the studio against the same specification.

If you're weighing this for an event rather than an office, it's a different format again — a rotating booth with a queue, covered in conference and event headshots. And if you're still deciding whether the whole exercise is worth budgeting for, are professional headshots worth it makes that case separately.

Frequently asked questions

Are on-location headshots lower quality than studio ones?

No, because the lighting travels with us. The portable kit is the same kind of strobe and modifier used in the studio, and the backdrop is the same seamless. What changes on location is the room around it — ceiling height, how much space there is behind the subject, and how much noise there is — none of which shows up in a tight headshot crop. The one honest difference is variety: a studio has more room to change the setup between looks.

How much space do you need in our office?

About 3 by 4 metres and one power outlet. A boardroom with the table pushed aside is the usual answer. We need roughly two metres between the subject and the backdrop so the background stays clean and evenly lit, which is the measurement most offices underestimate. Setup takes about 45 minutes before the first person sits down.

Can you match on-location headshots to studio photos we already have?

Usually, yes. Send us the existing images before the shoot and we'll match backdrop tone, crop and lighting direction as closely as the originals allow. We keep those settings on file, so someone who joins the team later can be matched to the same set whether they're photographed at your office or at the studio.

Is travel to our office included in the price?

On-location within the GTA is included in the $550 Executive session. The Mini and Professional sessions are studio sessions at 170 Sumach St. Team and company days are quoted as a day rate rather than per session, starting from around $125 per person at 20 or more people.

Our office has big windows. Does that help?

It's neutral at best and a nuisance at worst. We light the shot ourselves so the result doesn't depend on daylight, and a bright window behind or beside the setup mostly means the light on the first person photographed at 10am is different from the light at 2pm. We normally position so the windows are behind the camera or blocked, which keeps everyone consistent.