My review of the Sigma 19mm lens used on a Nex 7 (the world's most demanding sensor....).

I have a confession to make. It won't seem like much because I've made it here before but...here it is: I don't like wide angle lenses. They are unruly and they take in too much useless scenery. But I've found one that I like enough. It's the Sigma 19mm lens for the Sony Nex cameras. Someone at Sigma did their homework and made a lens that is sharp, cheap and works well on what is a notoriously difficult sensor for a lens to please. As I understand it light rays need to be collimated as close to a straight perpendicular as possible to image the light wells on the sensor correctly. The sensor doesn't handle tangential light rays well. Apparently someone at Sigma incorporated this into the design of their recent 19mm and 30mm lenses.

The 19mm yields the same angle of view as a 28.5mm lens would on a full frame, 35mm camera. Wide enough for me but probably too long for real wide angle afficionados. The 19mm is one of three lenses I took with me on a recent trip to Boston. I used it whenever I wanted a wide view. After a while I noticed that I was using the 50mm OSS Sony lens and the 19mm for nearly 100% of my shooting and I'd been ignoring the 30mm Sigma lens that I presumed would be my "go to" lens because of it's equivalency to my normal favorite focal length, the "normal" 50mm on a full frame camera. Funny how lenses and formats can change your preferences. 

From what I've seen the 19mm is very sharp, even at its widest f-stop of 2.8.  Many photographers immediately state that they must have all their wide angle lenses be as fast as possible and I get it. That's why I recently picked up the Rokinon 35mm 1.5. But if we are being rational we'll probably come to admit that a lot of the use of a lens in this focal length class is for snapshots and documentation and a lot of that is done in fair to good light. The trade off for faster glass is size, weight and price. You get all three when you go faster. It's not a case of "choosing one..."

If our goal is a lightweight, high performance travel package then the 2.8 aperture makes a heck of a lot of sense. I happily bought the lens at it's full price of $199 but in the ensuing months there have been temporary price drops to as low as $100. The price seems to have stabilized at around $150. If you are shooting raw you'll find a profile in Lightroom 4.4 for this lens that corrects for its geometric distortion.  What you end up with is a sharp image from a relatively tiny package.

After using the 19mm for the last few months the only drawback I've found (with the Sony Nex cameras) is the lack of image stabilization. If you use the m4:3rds versions you'll find that the OMD does a wonderful job stabilizing the image and giving you the feedback you want in the EVF.

My hope, in terms of future development from Sigma, is that they make available whatever lens formulation they are using for the  Sigma DP3 camera. It's a dedicated 50mm 2.8 and from the samples I've seen all over the web (including sites I trust like www.luminous-landscape.com) it's as sharp as the Leica M series 50mm with which I used to photograph. If they can make this available in both Nex and m4:3 mounts they'll have a new cult super hero lens on their hands. I'd line up to get one. Especially if they keep their pricing in line with the 19mm and 30mms.

Boston is a fun city to shoot in but perplexing. Even though there are tons of great things to photograph (both people and buildings) I've never seen a city with fewer photographers rattling around on the streets or in the museums and public spaces. Is Boston just totally over photography?

The best systems for walking around enjoying life and photography--simultaneously.

Olympus OM-D

When we looked away for a moment the world shifted. A few years ago, when traveling, I would see people at events, at monuments and in the streets shooting photographs. Some were using point and shoot cameras and documenting their vacations to share with friends and relatives. The people who wanted to make serious photographs were toting along serious cameras. Big, heavy cameras. Canons, Nikons and more Canons. All with big, fast zoom lenses on the front. Now it all seems very anachronistic to walk around with a hulking DSLR. It's a trend time shift. 

Let's face facts. No one is getting paid to walk around and shoot in the streets. There's no market brimming with corporations sending out requests for state of the moment street photographs. This is something we do because we love it. But it's a dying trend. We've mined the shaft and plucked out the gold and now what were left with is the love of the exercise and its residual benefit, time spent outdoors looking and living. The reason working photographers buy cameras like the Nikon D800 (the new, defacto professional tool...) is to put them on a tripod and extract from them every square milliliter of excruciating details to bring to the service of their clients. It's what is expected when controlled imaging is commissioned and used in critical applications. But it's a level of technology that's actually detrimental to the practice of the kind of enjoyable, recreational photography we seem to pursue most often, and always for ourselves as the primary audience.

I speak from long experience. I've shot in the street with old Nikon F's and Leica M's as well as with Hasselblads and other medium format equipment. But my recent experiences with street photography in and around Boston and then back home in Austin have convinced me that we've achieved a plateau wherein the technology inside today's premium mirrorless cameras yields a practical quality which, by dint of operational fluidity, matches the level of image quality you'll attain from dragging around much bigger cameras and lenses.

It's all a matter of user relativity. In the grand old scheme it's impossible to argue that, all supporting practice being perfect, that current mirrorless cameras (APS-C and m4:3) are as potentially good as the current crop of full frame cameras. Square milimeter-age will always count. But when we take away tripods, studio flash systems and other accessories and we use both systems side by side to walk through a city for hours at a time the gap between technical superiority and on sensor equivalency starts to fall apart. The bigger cameras cause us to fatigue more quickly and that causes muscle tremors that degrade image quality. The increased blood flow means a stronger pulse and that also affects our ability to steady the whole rig. The smaller pixels in the higher res cameras like the Nikon D800 seem to require the highest platform stability in order to show best results. When a stable platform is degraded (with time, fatigue and other physical constraints) the ability of the more technologically advanced cameras is effectively degraded to the point where the smaller, and more agile format and body styles pretty much achieve actual quality parity.

When we shoot in the street we want good results but we also want to enjoy our time there. To do this it's important to find the optimum balance between the results your tools will give you in a hand held shooting scenario and the weight and bulk you are willing to accept. Almost every commercial, working photographer I know has accepted the binary gear paradigm. One system for ultimate, no holds barred, commercial image making and a totally different system for recreational use. We still want big, lush files, quick operation and a range of delicious lenses but we're no longer anxious to power lift our way to nice images. We're also learning that ultimate resolution or ultimate perceived sharpness aren't nearly as important, for most kinds of carry around photography as choosing the right subjects and being in the right place at the right time.

You can argue all you want but a smaller, lighter system goes a long way to extending your range both physically and emotionally. In the past, when we shot film, I did my commercial work with a range of mostly medium format (and some large format) cameras. But I never considered taking my four by five inch view camera out for an ambling stroll across town. It always had purpose on its side, not exploration. I supplemented those larger cameras with Leica M cameras and their much smaller lenses. In the early days of digital we used five pound Kodak/Nikon bodies which had short battery lives and very heavy batteries. We found various point and shoot digital cameras, like the Canon G series or the Olympus C-3030 type cameras to press into service for our portable, recreational rigs.

Now we don't have to make as big a compromise for portability. We can get relatively equivalent performance our of at least three different choices in the world of mirrorless when compared to traditional DSLR systems. In the case of the Nex 7 (I may be prejudiced...) we can also have a sensor that is better that most of the APS-C DSLR sensors, extant.

After having shot for three or four hours each day, in Austin and Boston, over the last seven days I can pretty much declare that, for me, the days of walking around with larger cameras have come to an end. There are three systems in the mirrorless category that I would use without reservation for the kind of fun work I normally undertake for my own enjoyment. I present them here.

Fuji X-E1

If I were starting with a totally clean slate I would probably be seduced by the Fuji X-E1. The sensor seems to be state of the art for color and low noise and the lenses are reputed to be very sharp. The 18-55 kit lens is a 2.8 to f4.0 which, coupled with good high ISO performance, makes for a good all around package, right out of the box. Two things hold my back from trading in my Sony Nex stuff and taking the plunge: One is that I've just gotten to the point with my Sonys of understanding them completely. Knowing how to wring the best performance out of them in most situations. I'd be reticent to go through yet another learning curve.... and the second reason is that I'm using the Sony DSLT cameras professionally and with the LAEA-1 adapter I can use the lenses from the DSLT system to supplement the Nex lenses while retaining most of the operational features (wide open metering, all modes + exif).

On the other hand the Fujis, right out of the gate, seem to have a better selection of better native lenses... But then the Sony has a superior EVF, better autofocus and equal usability with legacy lenses. Between the three systems I'm talking about I think the real choices come down to lenses and how the camera feels in your own hands...

If we're looking at sheer acceptance the camera that most advanced photographers have chosen for a second system (and, for a large number, even a primary camera system) is the Olympus OMD.

The benefits are very straightforward: This particular camera may have the best image stabilization ever implemented in a still camera. It's amazingly good. Like science fiction. And unlike the in body stabilization of my bigger Sony cameras you get to see the calming effect of the IS in the view finder. The next benefit is the electronic viewfinder. While all three of the these camera systems give you EVF's the Olympus version seems the most graceful. By that I mean that people in general find it more comfortable to use. Easier to look into. 

While the Sony Nex 6 and 7 have higher spec'd EVFs the only thing that really matters is the actual user experience and even I'll admit that Olympus wins that contest. When you add in the wide range of really wonderful lenses that are already available for the system it's hard to argue against it. I've often said that if Olympus had beaten Sony to market with the OMD it would have been my first choice for a second system. With the 12mm, 25mm, 45mm and 75mm lenses for the Olympus system I would have a fine wide-to-telephoto system that still fits in a tiny bag.  And it would be a lens system that is made more remarkable by the relative speed of the lenses.

I am looking forward to seeing how Olympus will top the OMD. There are rumors of a more professional camera coming down the pike but if my anecdotal surveys of users are any indication it will take a lot to move current OMD shooters to another camera. There just aren't that many things people actively dislike about the current body. The one thing they might consider is a "big type" version for seniors. I do hear the occasional grousing about the size of the buttons....

Sony Nex 6

I think the best value on the market right now would have to be the Sony Nex 6. It's got a good sized sensor (16 megapixels, APS-C size) that's been well proven in popular cameras like the Nikon D7000 and the Pentax K-5. It's a tiny camera, almost pocketable with the right lens on the front and it's been deeply discounted lately. While I like the eccentric dial design of the Nex 7 the 6 will appeal more to linear photo thinkers and people who have become used to dedicated dials for everything. I don't like the new 16-50mm lens as much as I like the old, much maligned 18-55mm kit lens.  If I were considering sticking my feet in the waters of mirrorless high performance cameras I'd start with the Nex-6 and the original black 18-55mm kit lens. It's a great package and used with some skill and knowledge, could be used for 90% of most photographers' work.

There is no right choice. All three of the systems have a lot to offer. If you don't do photography for a living you might find that one of the three systems above matches your needs more directly than the larger systems to which we've been consistently acculturated. As Apple showed us with the phone and Honda showed North America with cars, there is no shame in downsizing our tools in order to make them more usable.

One more thing. It's wise not to discount the power of symbolic sizes and shapes when considering a tool for a task that cries out for either discretion or collaboration. A smaller and lighter camera is often times perceived to be used only for fun and recreation and not for news, documentation and commercial gain. When people are confronted with big cameras and lenses they often are moved to believe that the photographer will be using the images he takes of them for his financial gain. They rightfully expect that if they are part of the amalgam that makes profit then they too should be rewarded. Especially if they perceive that they are giving up their rights of privacy. Very little of that stigma attaches to cameras with smaller profiles and less "professional" appearance. In fact, I'd say the user of the smaller cameras is more easily ignored, overlooked, discounted which, in the end gives them more access, and more intimacy. 

To be honest, at this point there's very little difference in the sensors between camera shapes (excluding the less than 1% who are using full frame sensor cameras) and most of us would be able to get the kinds of images we want out of either a big DSLR with big lenses or a smaller camera with equally good lenses (albeit half the size). Technology is allowing us the option of being in everyone's face and combining a program of aerobic weightlifting while shooting OR finding a new way of shooting that is sleeker, more agile and far more comfortable when used on the street or traveling around the world.

Of course, the usual disclaimers and caveats apply. If you have a nice camera of any size and no reason to shred your budget then no one is pushing you to rush out and change. If you shoot stuff on a tripod and need ultimate quality, professional project or not, then you are still a candidate for a very high resolution, traditional DSLR or DSLT equivalent. The camera itself, considered in a vacuum, won't make you a better shooter. But access, calm muscles, even breath and a lighter load might....  Just a thought after spending some quality time in the streets....

Sightseeing while on the job. Miami. South Beach.

I was providing photographic coverage of a conference in South Beach being held by Broadwing Communications, one of the casualties of the dot.com boom. In the three years that they plowed through billions of American dollars I went along for the ride. Once in a while I'd end up in a nice Hotel like the Delano wondering when the music would stop (literally and figuratively). After a busy morning of photographing executives addressing sales people in a conference room I had the afternoon off. I walked down the beach from the hotel and found some huge tents on the beach.

It was the annual Latin Fashion Festival. With a bag full of Leica R cameras and some really cool looking lenses, plus my ASMP membership card, I was quickly able to talk myself into a press pass and an "all access" pass. I stumbled around clicking away with reckless abandon.

Art.

Eventually my time was up. I trudged back for the evening conference activities. I changed from film to digital, took a shower and changed from casual to coat and tie and headed back down to another serious exposure to corporate culture. 

I liked shooting color negative film with my Leica R cameras and the fast lenses. One of my favorites was the 80mm Summilux. I also liked the 180 f2. Ektapress 400 was my film of choice.

On a totally different note: I'm taking a little time off. I'm chilling and then I'm traveling. I won't be posting anything new on the blog until Friday the 15th. In the interim there are over 1,400 blog posts on the site. Just find the icon on the right side of the screen that directs you to the archives by year. Reading past blogs is totally optional, there will be no test.

It would be lovely if you took advantage of the time off to click through one of the Amazon links below and load up your shopping cart with all kinds of really cool stuff. You know, like expensive cameras and multiple copies of my five books. I'll get a small commission from Amazon for your purchases and you'll get lots of cool stuff. It won't cost you any more to click through the site.

Hope I have a few pictures to share from Boston when I get back...

If you are in Austin or plan to be in Austin before May 12th, go to the HRC and see the Arnold Newman Show.

"Photography is very unreal. You take a three-dimensional world and reduce it to two. You take color and reduce it to black and white. And you arrest the flow of time. There are many things that are very false about photography. You must recognize this, and build on it, and they maybe you'll have art."  -Arnold Newman.

My friend, Wyatt, e-mailed me a few days ago and suggested that I post information here about the Arnold Newman show at the Harry Ranson Center (aka: The Humanities Research Center) on the University of Texas at Austin campus. I was embarrassed when I realized that the show opened a couple of weeks ago and I hadn't been.

I don't recommend shows I haven't seen so I got into the futuristic Visual Science Lab car and headed over to the UT campus. Okay, the show is amazing. If you are a big fan of Arnold Newman's brilliant, black and white environmental portraiture you'll be in heaven. The entire ground floor of the museum is dedicated to showcasing hundreds of wonderful prints. If you aren't a big fan or you don't know who Arnold Newman is (go Google now...we'll wait) this show might surprise you.

"Oh, people set up these nonsensical rules and regulations. You can't crop, you can't dodge your print, etc., etc…  But the great photographers that these people admire all did that!" -Arnold Newman.

The venue is wonderful. And today was even more wonderful. While photography experts might come to the consensus that Arnold Newman is easily in the "top ten" of influential and amazingly insightful photographers who worked in the 20th century the show was made even more special for me because.....I was the only person in attendance. No line in front of the incredibly famous Stravinsky portrait (along with the contract prints and various croppings). No line in front of the Alfred Krupp or Picasso portraits either. Just an enormous, quiet, well lit room with me and a couple hundred amazing, black and white prints... Wyatt was right. If you're coming within 100 miles of Austin this should be on your list of "must sees."  Maybe even before Franklin's BBQ and the Continental Club.

"Successful portraiture is like a three-legged stool. Kick out one leg and the whole thing collapses. In other words, visual ideas combined with technological control combined with personal interpretation equals photography. Each must hold its own." -Arnold Newman.

When I finished staring at the beautifully crafted, fiber, black and white prints of equally interesting artists, actors and thought leaders of Newman's time I was a bit sad. It was obvious that photographers had much more leeway in the last half of the 20th century that perhaps we ever will again. The work showed a depth of conceptualism that made it more than a record or a magazine space filler. The background information conveyed by the curators of the exhibit made clear the reality that Newman could work on a portrait session until he got what he wanted....and he was able to solicit a collaboration with most of his sitters based on an intellectual sharing, and by using time as an ally.

The work is an amazing testament to the idea that people like Newman were creating art that pleased them first and sometimes singularly instead of just fulfilling the needs of a client.

If you want to see what photography was like when craft, talent, intellect and intention were required for success (not just good social media) you owe it to yourself to see this first hand. It's one of the best photography shows I have seen in ages. Made even more magnetic when you realize that he worked with a 4x5 inch view camera for most of his career and much preferred natural light and continuous light to electronic flash....

Wyatt was right. I was duty bound to report this one.

Lens Profile Happiness in Lightroom 4.4

This is one of those goofy photos you take when you want to check in on the performance of a new lens or camera. It's not going in the portfolio. Why did I take it? Because I wanted to see how a particular lens worked on a new-ish camera and with new lens profiles supplied with the upgrade to Lightroom 4.4.

I'll back up. I bought a Sigma 10 to 20mm f4.5-5.6 lens last year to use on an assignment photographing a new Whole Foods store. My primary camera at the time was a Sony a77 and while the 16-50mm lens was great for most stuff I wanted something with a bit wider angle of view. I researched the possible options and flipped a coin. The Sigma won. While the 16-50mm 2.8 DT lens was fully corrected for vignetting and geometric distortion by in camera profiles none were available either in the camera or in LR for the lens at that time. On the shots I took with the lens I added time to my post production routine to mess around with the edges and corners in DXO software. The results were fine for the project at hand. Not quite as good a performance as the 16-50mm but certainly very acceptable.

I was working in the latest ish of Lightroom a few days ago when I started looking to see if there were any new profiles for lenses I owned. I found profiles for the two Sigma/Nex lenses I recently bought, the 19mm and the 30mm. I kept looking and also found a profile for the Sigma 10-20mm. 

I like the two primes and I was curious to see if the Sigma 10-20mm, when combined with the amazing sensor in the Nex-7 and supplemented with the correction in LR, would have much improved imaging characteristics over the uncorrected performance last summer on the a77 DSLT, fixed mirror camera.

This building, under construction, provided a nice range of lines and textures. I thought it would be a good test. I used the lens with an LA-EA1 adapter, which has no mirror, only contacts for electronic information and primitive AF. I decided to use manual focus and focus peaking instead.

The Nex-7 has a very  high performance sensor with high sharpness. I'm very, very happy with the performance of the combined camera hardware and Lightroom corrections for this lens.

The image just above is of painted plywood barriers that surround the construction project. I thought it was a nice test of the lens's ability to render texture and a pleasing rendering of the saturated green paint.

As usual, performance parameters of modern cameras and lenses are moving targets which are influenced and changed by the influence of software driven corrections. It pays to check in frequently to see if some part of your imaging system has been improved and may provide increased performance metrics without having to upgrade.

Having done this test I'll be less reticent to use the combination for architectural projects in the future. Have I mentioned just how much I like the Sony Nex 7? 

Mindfulness and photography.

Images from Grapes of Wrath

I was having lunch with two creative directors yesterday. We were eating tacos at one of my favorite new (to me) restaurants, Garrido's. At some point we started talking about lost skill sets and the march of progress. There seems to be a thread of thought these days that goes something like this: "People will always chose a lesser product or service if it's easier to use and cheaper."

It's no big news when people who've been in a business for a generation or two start to bemoan the current state of the industry and then compare it to how things were in the good old days. But one of us postulated that, the process drives the creativity.  It's also true when stated the other way around. Creativity can drive the process. What we mostly agreed upon was the idea that making a process quicker and easier generally lessens the amount of thought and effort, trial and error, and experimentation that goes into it. Being able to separate the creation of photograph from the compulsion to "fix" what has already been created, through the use of filters and post processing also diminishes the authenticity of the process.

I'm not sure it's the new tools or the easy laziness of software dependence that's to blame for all the boring photography I see all over the place as much as I think it's a result of a society that's lost the ability to really concentrate and be in the moment when they are working. Even when we are working on our own creative projects. There are so many distractions. The ubiquity of the cellphone creates an anticipatory existence wherein we are constantly poised and on alert for the next text or phone call. The brain becomes bifurcated and thought diluted.

While everyone under thirty (forty?) will rush to demagogue this statement I really believe that at the point in our collective history when we allowed ourselves to be 100% available to everyone else we lost our ability to be 100% available to our own selves and our own processes. When we acquiesced to the concept of being "on call" we lost our ability to be really "mindful" about anything in our lives.

It's not digital cameras or online sharing that's causing our pleasure in seeing images to evaporate it's just our sudden (one decade) inability to concentrate fully on either the creation or the enjoyment anymore. It's the same mindset as sitting in a theater watching a movie and compulsively texting to find out what everyone else is doing now and what they will be doing in the immediate future. Our collective fear of being left out is draining our resources to opt fully in.

It's like trying to make love while checking for messages. It's a compulsion. It's also an epidemic.

I wonder if we, as photographers, can come back to a place of real mindfulness when taking images.

Everything we seem to create mitigates against it. I walked with several photographers last month. What a mistake. One kept getting calls from his spouse...which he answered. Another kept showing us "interesting" new apps on his phone. But the whole idea of a group walk with the idea of taking images is about as silly as it gets....if your goal is to make photographs for the sake of your own art. It's like creating the ultimate distraction and then making it portable.

Wouldn't it be an interesting exercise, on many levels, to set aside a day in which you pursue a really focused and mindful day just for taking images for yourself? Wouldn't it be cool to schedule a day that went from sun up to sun down (or later) in which you took only one camera and one lens. A day on which you threw away all the excuses and left your phone at home, in a drawer? A day where photography didn't revolve around the discover of chic new restaurants but actually revolved around your own undiluted looking and critical observation. A day when you thought about every single time you pushed the shutter button and made a photograph?  A day when no one came along for the ride?

I understand that for some people photography is an excuse to socialize and that's fine. But the people who roll that way probably aren't the same ones who read my stuff here. You don't have to be serious all the time. But it might be nice to make a date with yourself to be unencumbered at least some of the time.

Paying attention. Focused on one thing. Reducing distraction. Being totally there for your own life.

(Can you imagine an actor stopping between lines, in the middle of a performance, to check their phone?)

Corporate Portraits. Industrial Strength Imaging for Commerce.

I photographed Ross for his work. We should all have good "work" portraits.

In many cases they are the first impression we make with future clients.

As I cruise the web I look at the avatars on LinkedIn and Facebook. When I'm researching an industry I pay careful attention to the way corporate officers are portrayed on company websites and collateral. In many cases, when the copy screams at me, "We're hip and modern and of the moment!" the portraits are screaming at me, "Oh my God, this company is trapped in the 1970's." Or, at best, the 1980's.

I looked at a site recently and you could tell the eye and hand of a competent designer paid attention to the front page graphics and the trendy, hipster-inflected selling images but you could also tell that he or she was not invited to the corporate officers' portrait sessions. From the look of some of the images you could conjecture that the young designer wasn't born at the time of the shutter click.

Other sites, which are there to attract the attention of other businesses (B to B), are so casual with their photographs that one has to wonder whether or not they just rounded up the current executive leadership team's driver's licenses and had a go at the color Zerox machines.

Corporations spend big bucks  commissioning ad agencies to create a look and feel for their companies. Part of making "look and feel" work is consistency in application. And you can see it in every aspect of most Fortune 500 companies...except when it comes to portraits. At some point perhaps the key staff must have been exhausted from making sure their underlings followed the style books when creating order forms or overseeing advertising. Whatever the excuse you consistently find a hodge podge of images. Some look like classic 1950's portraits with august and sonorous poses and techniques that came from the Eisenhower years. The portrait right next to that might have been taken of its victim at a party with a Polaroid camera. Maybe an SX-70. Then a sprinkling of front lit iPhone attempts followed by a few party candids and a shot that some executive has been dragging from job to job since the Bee Gees were hot.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by corporations to put their best foot forward and to make a good first impression (and that's just the website) meanly sabotaged by the rankest photography. It's enough to make my eyes bleed.

So, here are my rules for companies:

1. Your images should be consistent from person to person. All the executives should look like they are playing on the same team.

2. Colored backgrounds are tough to pull off. Stick with white or some shade of gray. Neutral goes out of style slower than almost everything else.

3. You'll usually only get busy execs to play ball with you once in a full moon. Don't do amazingly tricky and trendy lighting because when it gets like old fish or older cheese you'll wish you'd been a little less......of the moment.

4. We're all done with haloed spots behind people's heads. Yes, I know. I'm as guilty as anyone else but it needs to stop for about a generation.

5. I make it a rule to never mix flora and fauna. A houseplant or fern doesn't say, "In Charge!" any more than it says, "How cool and innovative." An portrait in front of landscaping might work for senior portrait but the disconnection between nature and people who spend all day, every day in offices or going to and from interior location is.....to jarring, unnatural and anachronistic.

6. Since you are going for a consistent look it might be a really good idea to ask the subjects to do likewise. You don't want one guy in a nice suit next to the guy in the Hawaiian shirt anymore than you want the woman in the gypsy shawl next to the woman in a black suit.

7. When you are photographing these people remember point #3. They don't do this very often. That means they are self conscious. Give them time to settle in and for Goodness sake, throw everyone else out of the room so they don't say things and make faces and generally goad your subject into grinning like a stupid monkey. Or even a smart monkey.

8. Don't let executives see everything you shot. It's a variant of Murphy's law that most people will pick the worst thing you show them. Edit down to the top ten or five or three. Pretend that nothing else came out. Just don't ever fall for the demand to show them EVERYTHING. Believe me, they'll pick you apart and leave you questioning your competence.

9. If you can't get to everyone who will be in the brochure or on the website it's usually because the unattainable ones live in another city. Convince the company to send you there. Convince them that continuity is gold. Or golden. Or necessary. It's your sell, you figure it out.

(But in these days of micro budgets and small visions don't think they'll always go for it.....)

10.  If there are people in other cities who need to be photographed do this: Make careful diagrams of your lighting set up. Seriously, measure the distances from the subjects and heights of  lights and the distance to the background and the exact color name of the background and help the client come to the conclusion that they should instruct all the other photographers in all the other cities to follow your lead exactly. Then you and your client will have a fighting chance at coming up with something that will return value and stand the test of time.

technical notes: camera: Sony Nex7. Lens: Sony 50mm 1.8 OSS. Light: Elinchrom Electronic Flash in five foot octabank.