Photography · Political portraits · VIP
Studio portraits for campaigns and public office — a single principal photographed to billboard standard, or several hundred candidates photographed to one identical look. Same studio, same spec, priced deliberately at both ends.
From €90 / person at volume Principal portrait from €3,500 NDA before the first frame
A political portrait does a job no corporate headshot is asked to do. It has to hold at billboard scale and at ballot-thumbnail scale, survive being cropped by a newsroom that never saw your brief, and look like it belongs beside three hundred others photographed in eleven towns over six weeks. This is that service: one written lighting spec, one operator, one colour standard — applied to a single principal or to an entire slate, with the pricing built for both.
The two briefs we get
Political portrait work almost never lands in the middle. Either you need everyone on the list photographed to a standard, fast — or you need one image that carries the whole campaign. They are different products. We price them as different products.
End A · Volume
Everyone on the list, photographed against one written spec so no candidate looks better funded than another. Studio, or a mobile station we bring to regional offices on a roadshow.
Priced per person, falling with headcount
End B · Exclusive
One person, a closed set, and as long as it takes. Art-directed, lit for a specific end use, retouched to withstand a six-metre print, and licensed without a time limit.
Priced per campaign, not per hour
Height of the light, distance to the subject, lens, background separation and exposure are written down on day one and re-set on every subsequent day. That is the whole trick, and it is why a candidate photographed in week six sits beside one photographed in week one without anybody noticing the gap.
Every frame on this page is our own studio reference work, photographed to demonstrate the standard. No client campaign material appears here, or anywhere else on this site — see commitment 01 below.
Campaign images get re-cropped by people who never read the brief — a ballot booklet, a Facebook ad, a newspaper column, a roadside billboard. We shoot with headroom for all of them, and deliver every crop pre-made so nobody has to guess.
Delivered per person as separate files, correctly named. Nobody on your team has to open Photoshop.
Register
The same person, photographed in the same session, reading differently on purpose. Chosen per candidate at the brief, or shot as a set so you can decide later.
High-key, minimal shadow, wide separation. Reads as accessible and current. The safest default for a full slate and the easiest to key out for composite material.
Controlled grey with a soft falloff. The register for office-holders, ministry pages and anything that will sit next to a coat of arms. Ages the slowest.
Low-key with a shaped edge light. Serious, weightier, and the one that holds up printed large. Used sparingly — it is a strong claim to make in an image.
Headshots
A political headshot is a corporate headshot with a deadline, a licence and a hundred colleagues who have to match it. We shoot candidate headshots as a scheduled programme out of the Sarajevo studio or on a mobile station anywhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina — not as a hundred separate bookings.
Candidate headshots Political headshots Party list photography Headshot days Ballot photos
01
A booked room, a slot per person and a stated people-per-day rate. The efficient way to photograph a full candidate list without losing a week of everyone’s time.
02
The 3:4 frame electoral paperwork usually asks for, delivered alongside every other crop so nobody is re-exporting anything at the deadline.
03
Portraits for office-holders, ministry pages and institutional registers, shot to the same standard between election cycles.
Pricing
Per-person rates fall as the list grows, because the cost is in the setup, not the shutter. All tiers include one retouched master per person, the full crop set, and a licence covering the campaign period.
1 – 19 people
€280 / person
Leadership group, a committee, or a first round of named candidates. Extended session each.
20 – 59 people
€220 / person
A full municipal list or a single regional office. Typically one to two production days.
60 – 149 people
€140 / person
Multi-constituency. Two stations, fixed daily throughput, scheduled in blocks by region.
150+ people
from €90 / person
Full national slate. Roadshow schedule, written spec, one named operator for the whole programme.
Minimum engagement €1,400. Rates are per person for one session, one selected and retouched master, and the full crop set. Travel outside Bosnia and Herzegovina quoted separately.
The other end of the ladder
One person. A closed set, an art director, wardrobe and grooming, and three lighting setups instead of one. Retouched to a standard that survives a six-metre print, delivered with a full buyout — no territory limit, no expiry, no re-licensing conversation two years from now.
Priced against what the image is for, not how long it took. A portrait carrying a national campaign is not the same product as the same face on a party directory page, and we quote it that way.
Request a principal quoteThe question everybody asks first
We are a production studio, not a political operation, and we do not select clients by platform. What we sell instead is a wall — and unlike a promise of exclusivity, a wall is something you can audit. Six commitments, written into every political engagement.
No campaign frame appears on this site, in our social channels, in a pitch deck, or in an awards entry. Ever, and not after the cycle ends either. Every image on this page is our own studio reference work, shot for this purpose.
Each engagement lives in its own encrypted volume with its own credentials. No shared library, no cross-client search, no preview link that resolves to a neighbouring folder.
Signed before the session, not after the invoice. It binds the studio, the crew, and any freelance assistant or retoucher on the job — countersigned individually, not assumed.
Assistants are told the lighting spec, the schedule and the throughput. They are not told who else is on the calendar that month, and the calendar is not shared.
You set it at contract. On that date the working files are destroyed and you receive written confirmation — or, on your instruction only, moved to archive for the next cycle.
Not to press, not to another client, not as a reference, not in a case study. If you ever want the work attributed, that takes your written instruction — the default is silence.
If a wall is not enough for your brief, category exclusivity is available as a contracted add-on: we decline named competitors for the duration of the cycle, in writing, and the fee reflects the business we are turning away.
Step 01
We photograph two or three people first and lock the look with you — background, register, crop set and retouch limits. It is signed off before anyone else is scheduled, and it becomes the written spec for the whole programme.
Step 02
Your list is turned into a call sheet with a slot per person and a stated people-per-day rate. Studio in Sarajevo, or a mobile station we set up at your offices and move region to region.
Step 03
Same operator, same measured light, same lens and distance every day. Each person gets a directed session, not a conveyor belt — but the setup around them never moves.
Step 04
One selection per person, retouched inside the agreed limits, colour-matched across the whole set, cut to every crop and filed to your naming convention as one structured archive.
Per person
Across the slate
Rights & paperwork
We correct exposure, colour, stray hair, a temporary blemish, a twisted collar. We match every face in the slate to the same skin and contrast standard so nobody looks poorly lit next to a colleague. We do not restructure faces, change body shape, or make anybody younger than they are.
This is not squeamishness. A portrait that does not survive being met in person costs a candidate more than an unflattering shadow ever did — and the limit is written into the contract, so nobody has to argue about it at 2am before a print deadline.
Corporate & business photography
Yes. We work with anyone who briefs us, behind the confidentiality wall described above — separate storage, an NDA signed before the first session, no portfolio use of any political engagement, and an agreed purge date. If you need us to decline your direct competitors for a cycle, that is available as a contracted, priced add-on rather than an informal understanding.
Between 35 and 45 people per production day at eight to ten minutes each, on one lighting station. A second station and a second operator raises that to roughly 70. Larger slates run as consecutive days or as a regional roadshow — the schedule is agreed before the first day, with a stated people-per-day rate you can plan against.
The setup is recorded as a written spec on day one — light height and distance, modifier, power, lens, subject distance, background and exposure. A late addition is photographed against that spec in a catch-up clinic and sits beside the rest without a visible seam. This is the single most common reason clients come back to us rather than to whoever shot the last cycle.
Exposure, colour, stray hair, temporary blemishes and wardrobe faults, plus skin and contrast matching across the slate. We do not restructure faces, alter body shape or change apparent age. The limit is written into the contract.
Slate and leadership tiers include a licence covering the campaign period across print, digital, out-of-home and broadcast in the agreed territory. The principal tier includes a full buyout with no time or territory limit. Re-licensing for a following cycle is available from the archive if you have instructed us to keep it.
Yes. Invoices are itemised by line — production days, per-person capture, retouching, travel, add-ons — rather than as a single lump sum, so your finance team can allocate against their own reporting categories without asking us to reissue anything. Tell us your required breakdown at contract and we will match it.
As early as the list exists. Capacity in the weeks immediately before an election is finite and slate days book out first — a national programme needs its spec day locked well before the campaign period opens. Principal sessions are easier to place late, but not cheaper for it.
Studio in Sarajevo, mobile across the region, working worldwide. Tell us the headcount and the deadline and you will have a schedule and a fixed price within one business day.
