Watermark Corporate Session
Where Photography Takes Me
21 Headshots, 3 Hours, and One Thing I'd Do Differently
Brianne Lopez reached out in June of 2024 with a straightforward question: do I do group sessions? She was planning an event for Watermark Retirement Communities' professional referral sources and wanted to update their headshots. Maybe 18 people over three hours, she said.
We ended up with 21.
The session was at The Hacienda at the Canyon, their flagship Tucson property on Sabino Canyon Road in the foothills — a location I hadn't worked before. When I arrived and saw both the interior spaces and the view of the Santa Catalinas from outside, the plan changed in a useful direction. I set up two complete lighting configurations: an indoor studio on seamless and an outdoor setup that put those mountains directly in frame. Each person got to choose which look fit them better, or shoot both.
That part went well.
The Car I Didn't Expect to Be Driving
I usually drive a mid-sized car. My wife needed it that day, so I was working out of a Toyota Corolla.
I want to be clear: I am not someone who packs light. Two complete lighting setups means stands, heads, modifiers, power packs, cables, bags, a laptop, a backdrop system, and everything else that goes with a session that's running both indoor and outdoor simultaneously. I stood in the parking lot and looked at the Corolla for a moment.
It fit. It was a challenge, but it fit.
That discovery turned out to be genuinely useful — not the kind of useful you plan for, but the kind that changes your assumptions about what's possible on a mobile setup. If I'd known ahead of time, I probably would have been less impressed with myself.
The Light Source Decision I'm Less Pleased About
I'd recently started using high-powered LEDs for some of my pet sessions. Most dogs and cats are fine with strobes, but animals that are nervous around storms sometimes react to the flash cycle. The LEDs are continuous light — no pulse — and they'd been working well for that specific situation.
I brought them to the Watermark session instead of my strobes.
The results were fine. June Hussey's review says the quality exceeded expectations, and I believe that's accurate. But the reason I switched the light source for this session wasn't a good one. There were no animals in the room. There was no reason to prefer LEDs over strobes for a corporate headshot session. I made the change because I was using them regularly and it felt like a reasonable substitution. It wasn't a problem. It also wasn't a reason.
There's a version of this that sounds like a modest complaint about a session that went well, and I understand that. The point isn't the result. The point is the reasoning. Change for change's sake isn't improvement. Each tool has situations where it's the right choice, and using a different tool because it's newer or because you've been reaching for it lately doesn't make it better for the job in front of you. I know this. I didn't apply it that day, and the Watermark session is where I think about it.
How the Session Ran
Each person stepped in front of the camera, I made their portraits, and they reviewed the images on a laptop immediately afterward. They chose their favorites before leaving. June coordinated the scheduling throughout, managing around the group's varying availability — sessions like this have natural ebbs and flows depending on what else is happening at the event, and she handled that well on her end.
The full session ran three hours. Twenty-one people. Everyone had their selections within a day or two.
June Hussey's review:
"Michael Kloth recently completed 21 headshots for us during a three-hour window on location. He offered indoor and outdoor options and was able to accommodate our team's varying schedules throughout the session. The process was seamless, and the quality of work exceeded our expectations. I highly recommend Michael for corporate photography needs."
What Corporate Sessions Look Like in Practice
The Watermark session is a reasonable example of what a well-run group headshot day looks like: a clear plan, two setup options, on-site image review so no one leaves wondering what they got, and logistics that flex around the client's schedule rather than requiring everyone to conform to mine.
If you're planning something similar for your organization, the corporate and team photography page has the details on how I structure group sessions. For events with 10 or more people, the team partnership information is worth a look as well.
