Virgin Hotels Portrait Case Study

Virgin Hotels Edinburgh commissioned me to shoot a series of portraits of their team in Summer 2024. As the first Virgin Hotel in the UK, they enjoyed a certain amount of freedom in defining their visual style and identity. Keen to appear more family friendly and welcoming than their party orientated US counterparts, body language and connection were cruicial for these portraits. I managed to create a good relationship with my sitters, and by explaining to them what I was hoping to achieve, and engaging them in the process, we managed to create a series of images which achieved the clients’ expectations and the sitters loved as well!

I used different locations around the Hotel, each relevant to the area in which the subject worked, and took care to incorporate brand colours or themes in the backgrounds of each image. This helped give subtle nods to the roles of some of the sitters, as well as a chance to showcase elements of the hotel that stood out. For example, Food & Beverage manager, Angelos, was shot in the Hotel’s ‘Commons Club’ bar, using a simple lighting set up, and adding a few extra red bottles into the background for a little extra brand pop! And Hotel General Manager Mafalda made life easy by wearing her branded Tunic, and was shot in the Hotel’s stunning atrium, onto which many of the rooms open, making it a real hub and centre of the whole building. I asked her to look upwards, at the rooms above as a nod to her meticulous attention to detail and ‘always focussed’ approach to work!