Snap My Pitch Up

Ever been on company website and found yourself sniggering at some embarrassingly bad ‘meet the team’ photos?

Yeah, me too.

Come on you business types, it doesn’t have to be like that!

Just ask the lovely folks at Pitch, who I went over to photograph a couple of weeks ago…

A team you’d actually want to meet

For a recruitment company like Pitch, good quality photography is crucial. Not only are their clients from the visually literate creative and marketing industries, but what they do is all about people. Prospective candidates are going to want to see who will be holding the next stage of their career in their hands, and clients will want to be assured that the recruiters representing them create the right image.

A dynamic business staffed by dynamic individuals

OK, it really helped that the Pitch team are particularly good-looking and they work in cool offices, but most of all they were game for trying different stuff.

It was important that we got some slightly more formal ‘head and shoulders’ shots but we also spent a bit of time setting things up to look casual as well as taking some out-and-out candid shots of folks answering calls, checking their emails and sitting in meetings.

Candid shots of the Pitch directors Rob and Ollie

All to often I find that people equate ‘proper company photos’ with a bit of background roll, and while that’s useful to give a consistent look (especially if staff come and go) using real environments like in these more formal portraits give the shots some added vibrancy.

Formal doesn’t have to mean stuffy

In a relatively short space of time we covered off a lot of different shots. It really isn’t a big expense to invest in half a day’s shoot to supply you with a bank of images that can be used online, in presentations and press releases.

Looking like experts on a new reality show

To give them a good selection of images for their website, part of the brief was to capture their immediate environment in the Custard Factory and getting up on the roof of their building gave the perfect vantage point for a view of Birmingham featuring two of its most iconic landmarks – the Rotunda and the Selfridges building.

England’s secondcityscape

The Custard Factory complex is centred around the old Bird’s factory and over the last few years the area has worked hard to establish itself as the epicentre of media companies, artists and small creative enterprises in the Midlands.

Victorian food industrialist Alfred Bird, the father of egg-free custard, could well be spinning in his grave but I dare say he’d also be full of admiration for some of the big hipster moustaches that a few of the gentlemen were sporting about the place.

Signs of life

Stuck out on a limb as it is, I’ve often felt it was falling short of its ambition to be Birmingham’s Spitalfields. Admittedly it had been a while since I’d been, and I have to say was really impressed with how it’s looking. Apparently under new management, impressive urban artworks and a bit of redevelopment have really lifted the place and the improved buzz was noticeable.

Good on yer Brum.

Should have been a fixie really – some Custard Factory details

Photographing in such a quirky environment was a gift really and went a long way to transform this job from just another corporate shoot to something much more arresting and creative.

To be honest you could shoot this from any angle and it’d look cool

I had a great time with the whole team at Pitch and I’m really pleased with how the job turned out.

As were they.

RS x