Law Firm Headshots in Bangsar — KAAP Partner Portraits | AVS
Client Kadir, Andri & Partners (KAAP)
Location Menara UOA Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur — on location
Date November 2025
Team 9 partners · 2 AVS crew
Session 11am–2pm, scheduled around the firm's diary
Delivered 3 retouched images per partner, 5 working days
Investment RM3k - 5k
Most law firm websites look the same. A grid of faces, arms folded, jaw set, all photographed against the same grey gradient, all looking slightly like they're about to sue you.
When Kadir, Andri & Partners asked us to photograph their partners, the brief was different — and it's the reason this shoot is one of our favourites from this year.
The brief: less courtroom, more human
KAAP is one of Malaysia's established corporate law firms, with roots going back to 1976 and a practice covering banking and finance, capital markets, M&A and dispute resolution. The kind of firm where the client list is confidential and the credentials speak for themselves.
So you'd expect a conservative brief. Instead, they asked whether we could try something less standard — candid smiles, and a few frames where the subject looks away from camera rather than dead down the lens.
That's a request we don't get often from professional services firms, and it's a good instinct. A partner caught mid-laugh reads as someone you could actually call. The folded-arms stare reads as a stock photo. When every firm in Kuala Lumpur is running the same formal portrait, the one that looks like a real person is the one that gets remembered.
There's a reason they knew we could shoot that way.
The partner who contacted us wasn't a new client. We'd photographed several of her family milestones over the years, back when AVS was primarily a wedding studio — so she already knew how we work in unscripted moments, and thought the same approach would suit a portrait session.
It's the clearest proof we've had that the instinct we built photographing weddings carries straight into corporate work. Reading a room, catching the half-second before someone composes their face, knowing when to stop directing — none of that changes when the subject swaps a wedding dress for a suit.
The constraint: a three-light setup in a room that wasn't built for it.
KAAP's office sits on Level 38 of Menara UOA Bangsar. Excellent building, excellent views — and, like most premium office towers in KL, not designed with a photography studio in mind.
We work on location constantly across Bangsar and the KL city centre, and this is the standard reality. You're given a meeting room, sometimes a corner of the pantry, and you have to build a proper studio in it. Two of our crew came for the setup.
The room we were given was compact. Fitting a three-light setup — key, fill and a separate light for the background — into that space took some negotiating with the furniture, but three lights is what produces the clean, dimensional look the client wanted. Dropping to one light would have been easier and it would have shown.
The technical problem: a backdrop that didn't fit.
The firm wanted a solid, seamless background. In a room that size, we couldn't physically position a backdrop wide enough to cover the full frame at the focal length and distance we needed.
The solution was in post. We shot with the backdrop positioned to cover the subject, then merged the background in post-processing to extend it cleanly across the whole frame. Done properly, it's invisible — the edges match, the falloff is consistent, and nobody looking at the finished portrait would guess the room was too small.
This is worth knowing if you're briefing a photographer for an on-location shoot: "our office is too small for a proper backdrop" is not a reason to give up on a clean, consistent look. It's a technical problem with a technical answer. Ask whether the photographer can solve it before you settle for a shot against a meeting room wall.
The human part: most of them had never done this before.
Here's the thing that actually determines whether a corporate headshot session works.
Lawyers are used to being authoritative. They are not, generally, used to being photographed properly — most of the partners had never had a professional headshot taken. And there is a specific kind of self-consciousness that hits capable, senior people the moment a camera is pointed at them in front of their colleagues.
That's the real job. Our photographer worked through it with each partner individually: what to do with their hands, where to put their weight, how to produce a smile that reaches the eyes rather than the one everybody defaults to. The candid frames the client wanted only exist if the person in front of the lens has genuinely relaxed, and that doesn't happen by accident.
The camera time itself ran from 11am to 2pm — three hours for nine partners, with setup before and pack-down after. That pacing is deliberate. Rush it and you get nine identical stiff portraits.
Working around a schedule you don't control.
The 11am start wasn't ours to choose, and that's the point.
Partners at a corporate firm have afternoons that belong to other people — client calls, completion meetings, filings with actual deadlines. Their genuinely available window was late morning through early afternoon, and after 2pm the diary was gone.
So we built the day around their calendar rather than ours: crew on site early, lights up and tested before the first partner walked in, and a running order that meant nobody sat waiting for their turn. Each partner came in, spent their time in front of the camera properly, and went back to work.
If you're arranging headshots for a professional services team, this is the part worth asking about before you book. A photographer who can only offer you a fixed block on their terms will cost you more in disruption than the shoot costs in fees. Ask whether they'll work to your team's availability, whether they can be set up before your people arrive, and how they'll sequence a group so nobody loses half a morning queueing.
We shoot around our clients' schedules, not the other way around. For a team of billing professionals, that flexibility is usually worth more than anything on the invoice.
Delivery.
Each partner received three retouched high-resolution images, giving them options for the firm's website, LinkedIn, directory listings and press use. Turnaround was five working days from shoot to final delivery.
Investment: a nine-person on-location session at this specification — two crew, three-light setup, background merged in post, three retouched images each — sits at around RM3,000. On-location team sessions start from RM280 per person for smaller groups, with the rate dropping as headcount rises.
The partners' portraits now run across the firm's People page.
Why updated headshots matter more than firms think.
Professional headshots have a quiet way of ageing. A photo taken five years ago still feels current to the person in it — they see themselves every day. To a prospective client comparing three firms, an obviously dated portrait suggests a website nobody maintains, which suggests a firm that isn't paying attention.
For professional services in particular — law, accounting, consulting, financial advisory — the people are the product. Your website has photos of humans and text about capabilities. The photos are doing more work than most firms credit them for.
A consistent, current set of portraits across your whole team says the firm is organised and takes its own presentation seriously. A mismatched grid of different backgrounds, different crops and different years says the opposite, whatever the text claims.
Planning headshots for your team?
We photograph corporate teams on location across Kuala Lumpur, Bangsar, Petaling Jaya and Subang Jaya, or in our Subang Jaya studio. Small offices are not a problem — we bring the studio to you.