How much do corporate headshots cost in London?
Most photography sites answer this with "every project is different, get in touch." Here is our actual answer, with our own numbers rather than a survey of everyone else's.
The short version
One person, studio session: £275 at our studio in Clapton, or £400 at your office
Small team of 2 to 5: from £600, studio or your office
Half day, 6 to 15 people: from £850, one setup, one location
Full day, 15 to 30 people: from £1,400, one setup, one location
30+ or multi-site: quoted per project
Every figure above covers two retouched finals per person, a private selection gallery each, high-resolution and web-ready files, standard web, print and social crops, and delivery within two weeks.
We are not VAT registered, which is worth understanding: a studio quoting £1,400 plus VAT is asking £1,680. If your organisation cannot reclaim VAT (and charities, small partnerships and sole traders often cannot), that is a real 20% difference on the same headline number.
What drives the price
Headcount is the main lever, but not linearly. Setup takes the same 45 minutes whether you photograph four people or forty, which is why per-person cost falls steeply as the group grows. Five people at £600 is £120 each. Twenty-five people on a full day at £1,400 is £56 each.
Location matters less than people think and more than they hope. Our studio is the lowest-overhead option because the lighting is already there. Coming to your office is straightforward if there is reliable power near the shooting position. Somewhere without power means battery lighting, which is a genuine additional cost rather than an upsell.
Number of finished images per person. Two retouched finals per person is our standard. If you want three or four each across thirty people, that is ninety images of retouching and it is priced accordingly, though there are volume rates.
The extras that catch people out
Transparent PNG cutouts. Very common request for websites where headshots sit on a coloured panel. Priced per image, cheaper in volume. Ask for it up front rather than after delivery.
Rush turnaround. Standard is two weeks. Faster turnarounds carry an uplift. Budget for it if you are up against a launch.
A second location or a second day. Two offices is two setups, not one job split in half.
Advertising usage. Website, LinkedIn, social, press, internal comms, recruitment and printed collateral are included as standard. Paid advertising and out-of-home are licensed separately. If media spend is going behind the images, say so at the enquiry stage.
What should be included, and sometimes is not
Check any quote for these, because their absence is where cheap quotes get cheap:
A private selection gallery per person, so people choose their own image
Both high-resolution and web-ready files
Standard crops for web, print and social
Setup notes retained, so new starters can match later
A clear delivery date
That last one about setup notes is the one nobody asks about and everyone needs eighteen months later, when the team page has four people photographed against a visibly different grey.
Is the cheapest option a false economy?
Sometimes, and not always. If you need twenty functional headshots for an internal directory, a low-cost operator with a queue and a white backdrop will do the job.
It becomes a false economy when the images are the first thing a client sees. A team page is often the page people look at before deciding whether to email you, and photographs that look tired make the organisation look tired.
Getting a real number
Send headcount, rough date, and whether it is our studio or your office. That is enough for a fixed quote, not a range, usually the same working day.
