Startup Portrait Photography In Berlin

This startup portrait photography session in Berlin was for one of the people leading ObjectBox, a Berlin IT company. The portraits were needed partly for a conference presentation and partly for her wider online presence, so the shoot could not be only a collection of classic business headshots. We needed something professional, but also natural enough to show the person behind the startup.

We spent about two and a half hours, starting at Potsdamer Platz and later moving to Tiergarten with a little coffee break in the middle. That is to have enough time to make a varied set of images without forcing every idea into one location or one style.

Starting at Potsdamer Platz

Beaming woman in a cream sweater and delicate necklace stands on a city plaza with blurred buildings behind her.

I had photographed another business portrait session at Potsdamer Platz shortly before this one. Still, I did not want the two shoots to look the same just because we started in the same place.

This time I brought studio lights and had an assistant helping me with them. It meant I could shape the light more precisely and make the portraits a little more vibrant, while still keeping them believable. The location was there to give some modern corporate looking style and as you can see it’s only a supporting element and we barely get environmental context but enough to support business mood.

Startup Portrait Photography in Berlin: Smiling woman with long hair in a dark blue sweater sitting on a wooden bench outdoors

Making the lifestyle photographs feel natural

Smiling woman in a cream sweater gesturing with both hands while sitting at a wooden table with a glass of iced coffee in a green courtyard.

We also wanted photographs that felt less like formal business portraits and more like moments from everyday work. Having an assistant made that part much easier. At one point they could sit together at a table with coffee and simply talk, while I photographed the interaction.

For me, this works better than asking someone to pretend to be busy for the camera. Sometimes I even put the camera on a tripod and sit at the table with the person, so we can chat, while I operate the camera remotely as that gives a more natural look. The situation was still arranged, of course, but there was a real conversation happening inside it.

From the city to Tiergarten

Smiling woman in cream sweater and brown trousers standing on dirt path by a pond in a wooded park.

For the second part of the shoot we moved into Tiergarten. There I combined the available sunlight with the studio light and used greenery and flowers as a softer background. It suited her personality better and helped the photographs feel more open.

At the same time, these were still business portraits, so I kept the compositions relatively minimalist. In the nature photographs I blurred the background almost completely. You can still feel the colour and the environment, but the attention stays on the person.

Somewhere between a business portrait and a creative portrait

Smiling woman in a red shirt sitting cross-legged on grass in a park.

This was probably one of the more unusual business portrait sessions I have photographed in Berlin. It sits somewhere between a classic professional portrait and a more creative personal shoot.

If I was making purely creative portraits, I might have pushed the light further or made the images more dramatic, or, maybe, make the person interact with environment more. Here that would have been too much. The purpose was to show the person behind the business, not to let the visual concept take over completely.

Working directly with someone who leads a start-up gives a bit more freedom. We did not have to fall back on the usual white-shirt portrait or make every photograph look conventionally corporate. We could explore different light, city backgrounds and nature.

Portraits for a conference and a wider online presence

The final photographs had several jobs to do. Some would be used for a conference or speaker profile, while others were made for the company website, professional profiles and other online communication. That is also why the variety mattered. One portrait rarely works equally well everywhere.

One thing, I’m only showing a few images from the selection here, obviously we had more variations.

A conference image needs to read clearly and feel credible, often at a fairly small size. A wider lifestyle photograph can say more about the personality of people and the character of the business. Because we photographed both, we covered many contexts and its much better than repeating the same headshot everywhere.

What I liked most about this session is that we did not have to choose between a clean business portrait and something more personal. The photographs could do both, as long as the creative part stayed in support of the person rather than becoming the whole point of the picture.