Crédit Agricole CIB — Staff Headshots in London
Twice a year, every year since 2023, I set up a portrait studio inside Crédit Agricole CIB's London office and photograph the bank's new and existing staff against the City skyline.
Photographed and directed by Etienne MoraxCorporate headshot photographer (recurring)London, 2026
Project Snapshot
Outcome
A recurring headshot programme for a global bank's London office: two sessions a year since 2023, one consistent look.
Project hero media
Overview
Case Study
Crédit Agricole CIB is the corporate and investment banking arm of Crédit Agricole, one of Europe's largest banking groups, and its London office sits in the City. Since 2023 I have been the photographer the bank calls back every spring and every autumn to photograph its people: graduates in their first week, lateral hires, promotions, and anyone whose picture no longer looks like them. A meeting room becomes a studio for the day, the view of the City becomes the backdrop, and everyone leaves with a headshot that sits next to every other headshot in the bank's directory as if they had all been taken on the same afternoon. The first picture on this page is the set itself, mid-session. The mosaic that follows is a selection of portraits from recent sessions. Faces are masked here to respect the privacy of the bank's staff; the delivered files are, of course, not.
The Brief
Keep every staff headshot across the London office consistent, session after session and year after year, for the bank's internal directory, its website, LinkedIn, pitch books and client-facing documents, without taking people away from their desks for more than a few minutes.
The Challenge
- A bank's headshots are only as good as their consistency. A portrait taken in October has to match one taken eighteen months earlier, even though the light through the windows, the season and the people are all different.
- The people are busy. Bankers come down between calls and deals, often with five minutes to spare, and many of them do not enjoy being photographed. The session has to feel quick and easy, and still produce a picture they are happy to see in front of a client.
- The schedule is a list of dozens of names, with late arrivals, rescheduled slots and people dropping in unannounced, and every file has to come back correctly named for HR.
The Approach
- The set is the same every time, and that is the point. The subject stands in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows so the glass towers of the City fall softly out of focus behind them, lit by a large parabolic softbox overhead and a second one to the side, so the flash, not the weather, decides how the face looks. Same distance, same lens, same framing, same height, noted down after the first session and reproduced ever since.
- The camera is tethered to a laptop, so each person sees their picture on screen as it is taken and we choose the frame together before they leave. That takes the anxiety out of it: nobody walks away wondering what they looked like.
- I work from the HR list on the table, tick names off as people come through, and name every file against it on the spot.
The Execution
One photographer, one meeting room, one day per session, twice a year since 2023. A few minutes per person, the selected frame agreed on the tethered screen, then retouching and delivery with one consistent grade, in the crops the bank uses for its directory, website and LinkedIn.
The Outcome
Three years in, the London office has a single, coherent wall of faces: new joiners photographed this autumn sit seamlessly next to colleagues photographed in 2023. The bank no longer thinks about headshots; it books the next session.
Headshots for a bank, a law firm or a whole office?
We run on-site headshot sessions for financial and professional firms in London, with one lighting and framing standard that holds from one session, and one year, to the next.
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