When I photograph a leadership team,
we work out where everyone will stand together.
Usually, the CEO stands in the centre,
with the executives arranged alongside.
It is a familiar composition.
You can tell who leads the company at a glance.
But photographing the leadership team at Huawei was a little different.
The CEO said there was no need for him to stand in the centre.
So I suggested another option:
he could stand at the side.
The CEO stood at the far right.
Standing away from the centre
does not make the CEO disappear from the photograph.
Instead of drawing every eye to one person in the middle,
the photograph begins to reveal the relationships among the people standing together.
That matched the atmosphere I felt that day.
The company struck me as more open and less hierarchical than I had expected.
A person’s position in a photograph
cannot explain an entire company culture.
Yet something comes through in the process:
making a suggestion, discussing it,
and accepting it with ease.
A leadership group portrait
is more than arranging job titles in order.
It means considering how people look together,
as well as who stands in the centre.
On site, I suggest an arrangement,
listen to the people being photographed and adjust it with them.
For some organisations, a CEO in the centre feels right.
For others, a group standing alongside one another is a better fit.
What matters is finding a composition that reflects the organisation,
rather than simply repeating a familiar order.
What stayed with me that day was more than
the fact that the CEO stood at the far right.
It was the company atmosphere that made that position possible.