Corporate Photography + Video
Henry David Photography creates corporate image libraries, commercial photography, executive portraits and brand films for marketing teams. Henry David leads the strategy and creative direction, and he is the only camera operator on every engagement, photo and video.
Based in St. Louis. Working nationwide.
“Just amazing… Absolutely worth the investment.”
Wendy Menghini, Managing Director, EY
Selected clients
Where every project starts
A headshot program, a recruiting campaign, a new website, a facility launch and a brand film are five different assignments. Each one asks people to see, believe or understand something specific about your company, and the production should follow from that.
Henry starts with the business before he thinks about the camera. He wants to know what has changed at the company, who needs to notice and where the finished photographs and film will be used. The shot list, the locations and the schedule are built from those answers.
If you want a starting point before we talk, the Visual Brand Audit is a free two-minute scorecard of how your company presents its people.
Capabilities
Henry directs every one of these services, so the portraits, the image library and the film come from the same judgment and look like they belong to the same company.
Workplace, team, facility, recruiting and employer-brand photography, up to a complete image library your marketing and communications teams can keep drawing from.
Corporate photographyCampaign, industrial, environmental and product photography made for a specific commercial use, whether that is a proposal, a trade show or an advertisement.
Commercial photographyPortraits of the people who speak for the company, made for announcements, press, proposals, board materials and the leadership page.
Executive portraitsBrand films, executive interviews, recruiting and testimonial videos, facility stories and b-roll, planned to sit beside the still photography.
Video productionOne production plan for stills and motion in the same access window, so a busy floor or a leadership team is disrupted once. At Belden that meant a photography library and a brand film from one production day.
See the Belden photo and video productionSelected work
Integrated photography + video
Belden's St. Louis office is a 28,000 sq ft floor with a 1,200 sq ft experience center lit almost entirely by screens. Henry photographed the architecture, the experience center and the people using it, and shot a brand film on the same floor, in one production day. The visit produced 129 delivered frames alongside the film.
Read the Belden case study
Two companies. Two visual identities.
IWR North America had grown across multiple offices, each hiring its own local photographer, and marketing director Jessie Haupt wanted the company to move from stiff corporate headshots to an editorial studio look. For parent company MHS Legacy she was open to keeping the same look, but asked whether the parent had a stronger case for looking different. It did, and MHS Legacy was photographed as environmental portraits in natural light at Washington University's Brookings Hall.
Read the IWR North America and MHS Legacy case study
200+ people. Multiple sites. Four‑plus years.
A previous round of washed-out headshots had left the Taylor Family Department of Neurosurgery at Washington University School of Medicine feeling misrepresented. Henry built a department-wide program for 200+ faculty, fellows, residents and staff across multiple clinical and research sites, worked around operating-room schedules. The relationship has continued for more than four years and has grown into research video for the Zipfel Lab.
Read the Washington University Neurosurgery case study
Meet Henry
I grew up in the arts and spent years studying classical oil painting. Before starting a painting I would go through magazines, artwork and photographs looking for the one image worth dozens of hours of work. I did not know it then, but that search was training my eye to notice why one picture stops me and another does not.
Photography became the medium later, and the habit stayed. I bring the same judgment to companies: what already works, what is weakening the impression and what the business could look like at its best. On some engagements that reaches past the camera into site structure and copy.
The same attention goes into photographing people. A natural expression cannot be produced on command, so I pay attention to the person in front of me, give them something real to react to and photograph the moment it appears.
You do not have to know how to look natural. That is my job.
Working with large organizations
Good pictures only help if the project also works for the people who schedule it, buy it, approve it and use it afterward.
Send a few lines about the project, where the finished work will be used and the timing you are working toward.
How projects work
The first conversation is about what the work needs to accomplish and where it will be used. From there Henry maps the stakeholders, the schedule, the locations, the brand standards already in place and what the files have to do once they are delivered.
Henry sets the visual approach and the shot priorities, then plans the schedule, logistics and equipment around your people and your spaces, so everyone involved knows what happens on the day before it arrives.
Henry directs the day and coaches expression as he goes, so people are reacting to something real instead of holding a pose.
Review, retouching, editing and file preparation are planned around where the assets will live and the usage the engagement covers.
Turnaround and delivery expectations are agreed before production based on scope.
Corporate headshot programs
Company-wide headshot programs run from a small leadership team to a whole company across several offices. Every location is photographed to the same standard, so the directory, the website and the proposal decks all match.
Industries
Customers and recruits judge an operation they will never walk through by the pictures of it. The photography has to make plants, equipment and processes legible to people outside the building.
A directory photo is often a patient's first impression of a physician, and departments recruit faculty on reputation. The pictures have to match the standard of the care and research, and the schedule has to work around clinics and operating rooms.
Clients are deciding whether to trust people they have not met yet. Advisors, partners and teams need to look consistent from office to office and credible on the first visit to the website.
Finished projects, field teams and job sites are the evidence in a proposal, and much of it has to be photographed while the work is still under way.
Several offices, brands and hiring needs pull a company's image in different directions. The job is a visual standard that holds across all of them, or two deliberately different ones where two brands need them.
Also working with:
Client testimonials
“You nailed it once again! Thank you for your incredible professionalism and outstanding experience for everyone. You continue to deliver the most amazing photos for us!”
“Henry took the time to understand our business and the image we wanted to convey, offering expert guidance on poses and lighting. The final photos were stunning. Crisp, professional, and exactly what I needed to represent my business.”
“Henry responded quickly, was accommodating with the schedule, extremely easy and pleasant to work with, and he produced very polished pictures that demonstrated his eye and skill for tasteful editing.”
St. Louis, Missouri
Henry David Photography has a studio in St. Louis, by appointment, but most local projects happen on location at client offices and facilities across the metro, from Clayton and Chesterfield to St. Charles. For headshots and team sessions in the metro, see St. Louis headshot photography.
Beyond the metro, Henry has worked in 47 U.S. states. For programs that span several cities, see photography and headshot programs nationwide.
Photography and video for companies, their people and their products, along with individual headshots and portraits.
Common Questions
Mostly established organizations with a marketing, communications or HR team behind the project: healthcare systems and academic medicine, industrial, manufacturing, construction and engineering firms, financial and professional-services firms, law firms, universities and corporate leadership teams. Henry David Photography has worked with 120+ organizations, including Belden, Washington University Medicine, Boeing, KPMG, Merrill Lynch, EY, FedEx and IWR North America.
Yes. Henry leads the strategy and creative direction, and he is the only camera operator on every engagement, for photography and for video. The person who helps define the visual standard is the same person responsible for delivering it.
Yes. Henry David Photography is based in St. Louis and has worked in 47 U.S. states. Past international work includes Japan, South Korea, Prague and Edinburgh.
Yes. Stills and motion can be planned as one production and made in the same access window, so a facility or a leadership team is only disrupted once. The Belden case study shows how that works on a corporate floor.
Yes. A library usually combines executive portraits, workplace and team photography, facilities, recruiting and employer-brand imagery and supporting video, planned around where each image will be used. Company-wide headshot programs are one part of that work, and their sizes, scheduling and pricing are covered on the corporate headshots page.
Yes. W-9s, certificates of insurance, purchase orders, ACH payment and vendor onboarding are a normal part of Henry David Photography's corporate projects. The How We Work page lists the documents procurement teams receive.
Clients receive a written license scoped to the business use the work was commissioned for. Copyright stays with Henry David Photography. The aim is to avoid unnecessary licensing friction when the work is used that way. The exact rights are defined in the proposal and agreement. The licensing and usage page explains how this works in more detail.
It begins with a conversation about the business goal. From there Henry sets the visual approach, the shot priorities and the schedule. Turnaround and delivery expectations are agreed before production based on scope.
Start a project
Tell me what your company is working on, what is not working visually, and where the finished assets need to live. I'll tell you how I would approach it.
Prefer to talk? (314) 877-8877