AI art direction, by a working corporate photographer
AI art direction for founder and team portraits, by a freelance corporate photographer.
Executive presence, team portraits, and office scenes. Produced with AI, directed by me. No shoot to schedule, no calendars to align.
- Directed by a working corporate photographer
- Individual written consent
- EU data storage under GDPR
- AI use disclosed on every file
The problem
Your team page shows six people and six different backgrounds.
Scheduling that never happens
Getting a distributed team into one room for half a day is a project nobody wants to own. So it gets postponed, again.
A budget that is hard to defend
A full corporate shoot is a real line item. When marketing budgets are under pressure, it loses every time.
A page that undersells you
Different lighting, different backdrops, different years. The page reads as a patchwork, and it does not reflect what the company has become.
An image that lags behind your offer is visible, and it costs you.
Why a photographer
What AI on its own does not do.
I am Adrien Lacour, a freelance corporate photographer. I shoot real team portraits, company reportage, and founder branding for small and mid-sized companies, and I have been doing that work since 2024.
This service came out of that work. AI platforms produce images. They do not know your brand, they do not discard the results that miss, and they do not hold consistency across ten portraits delivered on the same day. Those are three separate judgments, and all three are mine.
One in five AI results is not usable: distortion, inconsistency, an expression that reads wrong. On a contact sheet, the eye keeps the right frame and drops the rest. That sorting is part of what I deliver, not part of your work.
One decision
The same face, two valid directions.
Kept- - neutral grey background: readable as a LinkedIn thumbnail
- - soft light, steady gaze: kept
- - exterior setting, end-of-day light: it tells a story, but not the same one
- - the background carries a city: reserve for a founder page or a profile piece
What settles it is the use. That decision, repeated frame by frame, is what separates a directed image from a model output.
Positioning
This is not the cheapest way to get AI portraits. It is not meant to be.
There are products that will return a gallery for the price of a lunch, and for a single profile photo they are a reasonable choice. I am not competing with them, and I will tell you so if that is what you need.
What I sell is the judgment: a visual direction set against your brand, results sorted before you see them, and consistency held across a full set. That work is done by a person who directs corporate portraits for a living, and it does not compress below a certain scope.
If your images carry weight, on a website, in a press kit, in front of a client, that judgment is the part you cannot skip.
Starting at $790 per project, priced from a brief and in the range of professional photography. See what each tier includes →
Executive presence
Your image is the first thing a room decides about you.
A founder’s headshot does more work than a team portrait. It runs ahead of you into a press kit, a conference program, an investor deck, a first call. When it lags behind where the company actually is, the gap is visible before you say a word.
Commissioned executive photography solves this properly, and I do that work too. What this service adds is the ability to keep that presence current: new contexts, new formats, new uses, without booking a session every time something changes.
The direction is the same one I apply behind a camera. The production method is what differs.
Likeness
The most common complaint about AI headshots is that they do not look like the person.
It is the objection I hear first about AI headshots, and it is fair. A model optimizes for a plausible face, not for your face. Left alone, it drifts.
Correction happens on my side, before anything reaches you. If a portrait does not read as the person, it does not ship. One revision round is included, and you validate every image before delivery.
I do not promise a specific outcome. I direct, I sort, and I show you what I would put my name on.
How it works
Three steps. No logistics on your side.
- 01
Brief and references
A ten-minute form. Your reference photos, your brand guidelines, the intended uses: website, LinkedIn, press, recruitment materials.
- 02
Direction and sorting
I set the direction, run the production, and sort the output. Selection, correction, brand coherence. Nothing approximate ships.
- 03
Delivery
Files organized by use case. AI use disclosed on every file. Your source images are deleted 30 days after the project closes.
Consent and data
Every person pictured consents directly, not through their employer.
Most AI headshot platforms let a manager upload their team’s faces with one click. That is convenient, and in several US states it is also where the liability sits.
When a company orders portraits for a team, the people in those portraits are not the ones signing the order. That gap is where most of the legal risk sits, in the United States more than anywhere.
So the consent flow does not run through you. Each person receives their own link, gives written consent, and uploads their own reference photos. Written, timestamped, per person.
Stored in the European Union
Your files sit under GDPR, in the EU, and are deleted 30 days after the project closes. Earlier on request, at any time.
Production runs on a third-party model
The production step uses a third-party service whose processing happens outside the EU, because there is no equivalent inside it. That transfer is covered by prior individual consent. I would rather state it than bury it.
Never sold, never used for training
Your images are not sold, not shared, and not used to train any model.
More detail in my privacy and data policy, in the answers on consent in the United States, and the list of subprocessors.
Fit
Who this works for, and who it does not.
A good fit
Founders and executives whose visual presence has not kept up with their positioning: a website, a press kit, a speaker bio, a profile that has to hold up in front of an investor or a client. Companies with a distributed team and a team page that reads as a patchwork.
Not a fit
One person looking for a single profile photo at product prices. There are products for that, and I am not competing with them. Buyers comparing on price alone: the direction is the product here, and it does not compress.
A young practice, stated plainly.
This service is recent and I have no US client reviews to show yet. They will appear here when I have them, unstaged. In the meantime, what I can show is the work itself and the framework each project runs on.
- Corporate photographer since 2024
- I direct, I sort, one revision round
- EU storage, deletion at day 30
- AI use disclosed
Anything still unclear is answered plainly in the FAQ, including what happens to the photographs you send.
Last reviewed:
Ready to align your images with your offer?
Five lines is enough. I come back within one business day with a scoped estimate, or a straight answer that I am not the right fit.
One business day, and a straight answer either way.