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The corporate headshot brief is deceptively demanding. You need a clean, well-lit space with a consistent background. A makeup station that doesn't involve balancing a mirror on a camera bag. Room for at least two people to be getting ready while one is in front of the lens. And ideally, the whole thing shouldn't cost more to hire than a mid-spec London room when the client is in Manchester.

I've run headshot days across the UK this year. Here's what I've found.

What actually makes a studio work for headshots

The physical requirements for corporate headshot work are narrower than most photographers think. You don't need a large cyclorama. You don't need overhead rigging. You don't need 200 sqm.

What you do need: a clean, neutral background — white, grey, or dark tonal options. A solid paper sweep or painted cyc wall at least 2.5m wide, so the frame at portrait crop is clear. A ceiling high enough to hang or position a key light above and slightly in front of the subject — 3m minimum, 3.5m comfortable. A makeup station with good mirror access and ideally a daylight-balanced lamp. And a space that's genuinely quiet — not "quiet enough for photography" but quiet enough for a subject to feel relaxed during the three minutes they're in front of your lens.

That last point matters more than photographers usually acknowledge. A subject who can hear office noise through a thin partition, or lorries on a loading bay outside, is a subject who's not fully relaxed. And tight shots of faces show tension.

Manchester

Manchester is the best headshot market outside London. There are dedicated portrait and headshot studios in the Northern Quarter and Ancoats that have clearly been specified by photographers who understand the brief.

The spaces that work best for headshot days in Manchester tend to have: white-walled rooms with a clean cyc corner or swept paper, at least one set of softbox or beauty dish lighting included in the hire, and a separate area for subject prep and makeup. Some have natural light from north-facing windows as an additional option, which gives you the flexibility to offer clients a more editorial natural-light look alongside the controlled studio setup.

Rates in Manchester for a dedicated headshot room run £55–£85/hr, or £180–£300 for a half-day. Full-day hire with basic lighting included is typically £350–£500. Compare that to £85–£150/hr for a comparable London room and the maths are obvious. For clients based in the north-west, Manchester is the right answer on cost as well as logistics.

The tip that saves time: ask specifically about subject access. Can your subjects park nearby? Is there a waiting area? For a corporate headshot day with fifteen people rotating through, the logistics of where people wait and how they move through the space matters as much as the lighting rig.

Leeds

Leeds has a smaller studio scene than Manchester but several spaces that work well for headshot work. The South Bank area and the industrial spaces around Kirkstall have photographic studios with enough ceiling height and wall spec to deliver clean corporate portraits.

The challenge in Leeds is kit inconsistency. The studios that have been operating for ten or more years tend to have their lighting infrastructure in reasonable order — you'll find a working Bowens or Godox monolight setup and a clean set of seamless paper rolls. Newer spaces that have converted from general hire to photography use sometimes have less coherent kit. Worth asking specifically what's included and in what condition.

Day rates in Leeds sit around £45–£70/hr for a photography studio with basic kit. A half-day at a well-specified room will run you £160–£250.

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is a surprisingly good headshot market for a city its size. Leith in particular has creative studios that are purpose-built and well-specified — the investment in the area has brought new commercial photography spaces alongside the arts infrastructure.

The challenge with Edinburgh is the light calendar. In winter, usable window light is limited to a very narrow window — maybe four to five hours of reasonable daylight in December and January, and even that's often overcast. For headshot days that run 9am–5pm, you're on controlled studio lighting for the majority of the session regardless. Make sure the studio has a proper artificial lighting setup rather than relying on the "lovely daylight" mentioned in the listing.

Edinburgh studio rates are broadly comparable to Manchester — £55–£80/hr for a well-specified headshot room. Leith spaces tend to run slightly cheaper than central Edinburgh equivalents with similar kit, largely because parking and access costs in the centre add friction that Leith doesn't have.

Glasgow

Glasgow is consistently underrated for commercial photography infrastructure. Finnieston has seen significant creative investment in the last five years, and several commercial photography studios there are operating at a standard that would hold up in any major city. The rates are genuinely compelling — often 20–30% below Edinburgh for comparable spec.

For corporate headshot days specifically, Glasgow studios in the Finnieston and Charing Cross areas tend to offer something that's actually rare: good natural light in usable quantities more frequently than Edinburgh, because the city's weather patterns are marginally kinder in terms of cloud depth. Not dramatically, but enough to matter when you're planning a daylight-supplemented headshot session.

I shot a full day of corporate portraits in a Finnieston studio earlier this year. North-facing windows gave me clean, soft light from 9am to 2pm. Switched to a Godox AD600 Pro (600Ws, 5600K) on a gridded softbox for the afternoon without any perceptible difference in light quality to the client. The room cost £280 for the day including basic lighting. A comparable Hackney room would have been twice that.

Birmingham

Birmingham's headshot studio scene sits around Digbeth and the Jewellery Quarter. Both areas have commercial photography studios that are viable for corporate portrait days. The range of quality is wide — from genuinely excellent purpose-built spaces to converted office rooms that haven't been thought through for photography use.

The Jewellery Quarter tends to have smaller, more intimate spaces — good for individual or small-group headshot sessions, less practical for a corporate day with twenty or more subjects cycling through. Digbeth has the larger spaces with more flexibility.

Rates across Birmingham studio hire for headshot work: £55–£95/hr depending on spec and location, with half-day rates at £200–£350 for equipped rooms.

The spec I send every studio before I book a headshot day

For corporate headshot work, I send a brief to every studio before I confirm a booking. It includes: background options — I need white, mid-grey, and dark tonal — and whether I can get all three without moving furniture significantly between subjects. White seamless paper minimum 2.72m wide. Lighting setup — do they have a beauty dish or large softbox as standard, or do I need to provide? And specifically, is the key light position flexible so I can angle it from above? Makeup space — where do subjects prep, and is there a dedicated mirror with good light? And subject access — where do people wait, is there a toilet nearby?

Studios that answer these questions specifically and confidently are usually the ones where the headshot day runs cleanly. Studios that are vague or unclear on any of these points are the ones where I arrive to find the lighting can't go high enough or the makeup station is a mirror balanced against a reflector.

Pricing the brief to clients outside London

One thing worth being clear about with clients outside London: the lower studio rate doesn't mean lower quality. I've shot headshots in a £280/day Glasgow studio that are indistinguishable in final output from sessions in a £600/day Shoreditch room. The light is the same. The camera is the same. The photographer is the same.

What changes is the overhead on the brief, which passes back to the client as either a better price or better margin. If you're a photographer working nationally, pricing headshot days regionally against London rates is a missed opportunity for both you and your clients.

Find well-specified headshot studios across the UK at creativestudiohire.com.

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