Preparing your team for headshot day.

One note, written once.

You are writing one document, not answering the same question one desk at a time. A short, specific note removes almost all of the uncertainty that makes people show up tense, and tension is the thing that photographs worst of everything on this page. Vagueness is what creates it: an email carrying only a date leaves everyone quietly guessing about clothes, grooming and what will be asked of them.

Keep it to a single screen. State what to wear, where to be and when their slot is, and say plainly that no experience with being photographed is needed. Anything longer gets skimmed, and the lines that mattered are usually the ones skimmed past. Good headshots work the same way as the note does: decide the few things that matter, then stop adding.

Save the note once you have written it well, because you will use it again. New hires, a rebrand that changes the background, or a second round of photos a year or two later all start from the same short document, edited rather than rewritten. That is a smaller job than starting from a blank page each time, and it keeps the tone consistent even if a different person ends up sending it.

What to say about wardrobe.

Wardrobe advice for a team needs one addition that an individual session does not: it has to work against the specific background chosen for the whole set. Solid colors that do not clash with that background, nothing overly bright or overly dark depending on what was picked, and no busy patterns that pull attention away from faces lined up next to one another.

Do not try to teach fabric, color and fit inside an email. Give the two lines above, put what to wear for headshots underneath them as a link, and add the one line that makes it specific to your team: the background that was chosen, and anything your company already has a rule about. The people who want detail will follow the link. The rest only ever needed the two lines.

Grooming, on a group timeline.

The grooming advice that applies to one person applies to everybody on a roster, with one added wrinkle: everyone is being scheduled against the same session day, so the timing has to be planned rather than left to chance. A haircut or a color change needs a few days to settle before it looks like a person's normal self again, not a fresh appointment.

Send the note early enough that anyone planning a cut or a color has time to book it ahead of the session rather than the day before, which is covered in haircut and color timing. The same logic applies to eyebrows, which want a few days to settle rather than being shaped the morning of, and that timing has its own short guide in eyebrow timing.

For men on the roster with a beard, a simple line covers it: trim and line it a day or two ahead if that is already part of the routine, or shave the morning of if that is the normal habit, and give either one enough time to settle before arriving. The goal for everyone, beard or none, is the same: look like a slightly more deliberate version of an ordinary day, not a different person.

Studio based, arriving in sequence.

Put one plain line in the note saying the photographs are made at my private studio in Naples and that people are coming to me. It is the line most often left out, and its absence is why somebody always asks whether a photographer is turning up in the conference room. Saying it also sells the better half of the arrangement to whoever is dreading their turn: no colleagues watching over a laptop, no audience, and nobody's desk in the background.

Add the mechanics in one more line: everyone is photographed in sequence, one person after another, here rather than anywhere else. What the sitting itself is like is described on the team headshots page, and the reasoning behind why one room is what makes a set match is worked through in the team headshots planning guide rather than repeated here.

The colleague who hates this.

If one person on the roster is dreading their turn, the note is your only chance to reach them before the day. Give the reassurance its own short paragraph rather than burying it under the wardrobe lines, and word it as a fact rather than as encouragement: there is no posing to learn, because every pose is directed head to toe. Encouragement reads as pressure to somebody who is already feeling it.

It also helps to let people pick their own place in the order where you can, rather than being handed one. Somebody who chose the time has already agreed to it once, which is a much smaller step than being told when to appear, and the running order is something we work out together anyway.

One line about your brand guidelines.

If your company has any brand guidelines, even informal ones, mention them in the note or send them separately, since they affect the background and formality choices already made for the whole set. Staff do not need to see the guidelines themselves, only the outcome: what to wear and how the group is presenting itself.

Two more pages carry the parts your note should not try to cover itself. Everything an individual has to handle on their own is in how to prepare for a photoshoot, which is the right thing to link under your signature, and what happens once somebody is actually in front of the camera is in how to pose for team photos, which nobody needs to read, though the anxious ones will.