Photography
Wardrobe, light, framing and neutral-warm color grading across a photographic set.
The five constants
Every image in the brand set shares these. If one changes, the whole set has to be reshot or regraded — which is why they are constants and not preferences.
| # | Constant | Value |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ground | Warm white / light grey #F4F5F2 → #ECEEE9, seamless, no visible corners |
| 2 | Wardrobe | Black or near-black tailoring + white shirt, or black tee. One lime accent maximum |
| 3 | Light | Large soft key front-left, gentle fill, catchlights visible, no hard shadow on the face |
| 4 | Framing | Eye level, 85–105mm equivalent, head + shoulders, centred, 6–8% head margin |
| 5 | Grade | Neutral-warm, faithful skin, low–medium contrast, no split-tone, no vignette |
Wardrobe
Team portraits (the standard look)
- Black blazer or jacket, white collared shirt — or a black crew tee for a lighter register.
- One brand cue: the lime lapel pin. One per person, always on the wearer's right lapel (camera left). No other logos or pins.
- No patterns, no prints, no bright colour blocks, no denim-blue or navy headline pieces, no visible brand marks from other companies.
- Jewellery: minimal.
Casual register (studio-in-action, behind-the-scenes)
- Black, charcoal, white, warm neutral. A single muted earth tone is allowed.
- Nothing fluorescent, nothing slogan-printed, no competitor logos.
Why black + white: it is the only combination that reads correctly on both the obsidian and warm-white canvases we design against, and it lets the lime pin be the one colour the eye finds.
Light
- One large soft source, front-left, roughly 45°, feathered — a 120cm softbox or a window with diffusion.
- Fill from camera right at ~1 stop under the key. Shadows stay open and clean.
- Catchlights in both eyes at roughly 10–11 o'clock.
- Background lit ½–1 stop above the subject so the ground stays warm white, not grey mud.
- Absolutely no: bare on-camera flash, hard noon sun, coloured gels, practical neon, rim-light halos.
Framing
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Lens | 85–105mm full-frame equivalent (no wide-angle faces) |
| Aperture | f/4–f/5.6 for a set (consistent depth of field across everyone) |
| Height | Lens at eye level — never looking down on the subject |
| Crop | Head + shoulders; crown at 6–8% from the top; eyes at ~40% from the top |
| Horizon | Level; no dutch angles |
| Deliver | 1:1 master + 4:5 for cards |
Chest-up, not passport. A little shoulder and collar keeps it human.
Colour grade
The target is "warm neutral": it should look like the room was pleasant, not like a filter was applied.
| Control | Setting |
|---|---|
| White balance | +150 to +300 K warmer than neutral; no green or magenta cast |
| Contrast | Low–medium; blacks lifted slightly (not crushed) |
| Highlights | Not clipped — shirt detail stays |
| Shadows | Open; detail visible in black fabric (black should not read as a void) |
| Saturation | Natural; skin slightly under-saturated rather than punchy |
| Skin | Faithful across all tones; no orange push on darker skin, no Pink/Orange on lighter |
| Split toning | None. No teal shadows, no orange highlights |
| Clarity / texture | Moderate — enough for fabric texture, no HDR crunch |
| Grain | None, or very fine and uniform |
| Vignette | None |
| Sharpening | Portrait-appropriate; no halos against the light ground |
The five-second test: hold the image next to the reference set. If skin looks cooler, flatter, or more saturated than the reference, it is wrong.
Consistency across a set
Sets matter more than singles. An inconsistent portrait is worse than a plain one.
- Shoot everyone in one session on the same backdrop, light and lens.
- One grade, applied to all files — a single preset or LUT, not per-image judgement.
- Same crop, same head margin, same background tone.
- If a person cannot be in the session, match them to the set deliberately: shoot against the same ground, then grade to the reference, and check side by side.
Set checklist
- Same background tone across all files (sample the pixel, don't eyeball it)
- Same head margin and eye line
- Same lens / depth of field / crop
- Same grade — no individual "improvements"
- Lime pin present and on the same lapel in every shot
- 1:1 and 4:5 crops exported
Studio & mockup scenes
The messy-studio rule still holds — real desks, real cables, real paper — but the grade is the same neutral-warm, and the palette stays obsidian / warm white / one lime note.
- Keep one horizontal anchor (desk edge, shelf, window line).
- Let the frame breathe; one subject, one gesture.
- No glossy showroom setups, no blue-hour neon, no fake sunlight beams, no HDR.
- Screens show our work or an abstract block — never invented client logos or fake UI.
Never
- Teal-and-orange grading, heavy vignettes, HDR, or "AI look" (over-smooth skin, plastic highlights, impossible bokeh, six fingers).
- Cool/blue-grey grade — it reads gloomy and off-brand.
- Coloured gels, neon, lens flare, light leaks.
- Synthetically generated faces presented as team members.
- Logos of other companies, or invented Creative Yadley marks inside an image.
- Wordmark rendered by an image model — the name is set in Jakarta as live text.