A beautiful portrait can still be completely useless to your website designer.
It might be sharp, flattering and full of personality. It might look excellent on LinkedIn or Instagram. But the moment your designer tries to place it across the top of your homepage, add a headline beside it or make it work on both desktop and mobile, everything starts to fall apart.
The problem isn’t necessarily the quality of the photograph.
It’s the format.
For most business websites, vertical portraits are only part of what is needed. Your photographer should also create horizontal branding photos for your website, with enough space, flexibility and variation to work across different pages and screen sizes.
The best branding photography isn’t simply a collection of attractive portraits. It’s a practical image library designed around how your business actually communicates.
Why website banners need horizontal photographs
Most modern websites use wide sections.
The top of a homepage often includes a large banner image, sometimes called a hero image, alongside a headline, short introduction and button. Service pages may use wide photographs between sections. Blog headers, landing pages and contact pages often need similar proportions.
A vertical portrait doesn’t naturally fit into that space.
Your designer may be forced to crop heavily into the photograph, losing your hands, surroundings or even part of your face. Alternatively, they may have to place the image inside a smaller box, leaving awkward gaps or weakening the overall design.
A horizontal photograph gives them far more freedom.
It can stretch across a wide screen. It can sit beside text. It can be cropped slightly for a different page without destroying the composition. It gives the design room to breathe.
That doesn’t mean every photograph should be horizontal. It means a useful branding gallery needs a mixture.
Your designer needs space for text
One of the most important parts of creating horizontal branding photos for a website is leaving deliberate negative space.
Negative space is the quieter area around the subject. It might be a plain wall, part of an office, an area of soft background or simply open space within the frame.
That space isn’t wasted.
It gives your designer somewhere to place a headline, short paragraph or call-to-action button without covering your face or making the image feel cluttered.
Imagine a photograph where you are positioned directly in the centre, filling most of the frame. It may look strong as a standalone portrait, but there is nowhere obvious for text to go.
Now imagine a wider version, with you placed on the right-hand side and clear space to your left. That same scene suddenly becomes far more useful. The designer can add text on the left while keeping the photograph balanced and easy to read.
During a branding shoot, I will often create both versions.
One may be framed as a strong portrait. Another will be composed specifically with website text in mind.
They are similar photographs, but they do very different jobs.
Responsive websites change the crop
Your website doesn’t appear in one fixed shape.
Someone may view it on a large desktop monitor, a laptop, a tablet or a narrow mobile screen. A well-built website adjusts its layout to suit each device. This is known as responsive design.
The photograph may also be cropped differently on each screen.
On desktop, your full horizontal image might be visible. On a phone, the website may show a narrower section from the middle. If important details sit too close to the edge of the frame, they may disappear.
This is another reason tightly composed photographs can cause problems.
A photograph that only works when every part of the frame is visible is not very flexible. A more carefully planned image gives your designer room to crop without cutting through your face, hands or another important part of the photograph.
When I am shooting branding photography, I try to keep these possible crops in mind.
Where will the subject sit?
What could happen if the left or right side is removed?
Will the photograph still work in a wide banner?
Could it also be cropped into a square?
Planning for these questions during the shoot is much easier than trying to repair the problem later.
Why tightly cropped vertical portraits frustrate designers
Close portraits are valuable.
They are often ideal for profile pictures, team pages, speaker biographies, press coverage and social media. They can feel direct, confident and personal.
But they are not enough on their own.
A tightly cropped vertical portrait gives your website designer very few options. There may be no background to extend, no room for text and no flexibility to reposition you within the layout.
The designer may end up enlarging a low-resolution section, inventing background with editing tools or using the same photograph repeatedly because nothing else fits.
None of those is ideal.
The biggest frustration is usually not that one image has the wrong crop. It is that the client has been given too few usable variations.
A strong branding gallery should include close portraits, wider portraits, horizontal compositions, vertical compositions and images with space on both sides. It may also include detail shots, working photographs and wider environmental scenes.
That range gives the website designer choices.
Photographing with several final formats in mind
A branding shoot should start with the end use.
Before taking photographs, it helps to consider the pages being built and the different places the images may appear. My [branding photography planning guide] explains how to think through your audience, locations, outfits, activities and image requirements before the shoot.
You do not need to know every exact crop in advance, but you should have a sensible list of likely uses.
For example:
A wide homepage banner with space for a headline.
A horizontal image for each main service page.
Vertical portraits for team profiles and social media.
Square crops for profile images.
Wider working photographs for blog posts and newsletters.
Images with space on the left and others with space on the right.
During the session, small changes can create far more variety.
I might move you from the centre of the frame to one side. I might step backwards to include more of the location. I might shoot the same setup both horizontally and vertically. I might create one tighter portrait followed by another with far more breathing space.
These variations do not need to make the shoot feel slow or repetitive. They simply require the photographer to understand that the final gallery needs to be useful, not just visually impressive.
Plan your images for multiple uses
The most important lesson is simple.
Plan your photographs for more than one use.
Do not commission a branding shoot purely to get a new profile picture and then expect that image to carry your entire website, social media, press activity and marketing for the next two years.
Your business needs a varied image library.
When the photography is planned properly, your designer can build stronger pages, your social content becomes easier to create and your brand looks more consistent across every platform.
You also avoid the frustrating moment when someone says, “These photographs are lovely, but we cannot actually use them here.”
If you are planning a new website or refreshing an existing one, now is the right time to plan your next branding shoot. We can create horizontal website images, portraits, working photographs and flexible compositions that give your designer everything they need.
Get in touch to start planning a branding photography session that works beautifully and works hard.
