Portrait studio - Rotterdam
Everyone leaves with the same light.
Amara is one room on Katendrecht with one light in it. A sitting takes an afternoon at most and hands back frames that hold up on a website, a cast list and a printed page.
Sittings
One person, one sitting, four frames
Not six best pictures of six different people. Four consecutive sittings, whole, so you can see what a session actually hands back.
Nadia Ferreira
Actor
Two casting looks in one hour - one warm, one flat and hard - both readable at the size a casting director actually sees them.
Joost Brinkman
Founder, logistics software
A picture for a funding announcement that would not embarrass him on a conference stage six months later.
Sofia Lindgren
Novelist
A jacket photograph that had to survive being printed at the size of a postage stamp, and a wider frame for the festival programme.
Marguerite Sow
Managing partner
Booked ahead of a rebrand so that nobody on the new site would look like they had been added to it afterwards.
Every sitting comes back the same way: four finished frames, retouched by hand, sized for print and for the web, with the raw set kept on file for a year.
Book a sittingPortraits
Everyone who has stood on the paper
Actors, founders, authors and whole teams, all photographed at the same distance under the same one light. Open any of them to see the full sitting.
Booked by
Who ends up on the paper
Agencies send their actors, firms send their partners, and once a year somebody sends a whole floor.
The studio
One room, one light, a steamer by the door
Half of a good portrait is the shirt, which is why there is a steamer and a jar of clean collar stays inside the front door.
I photograph people who need to look like themselves in a very small square.
I am Marit Zwaan. I trained on a newspaper portrait desk, where you get eleven minutes with a stranger in a corridor and have to come back with something publishable, and I have been running my own room on Katendrecht since 2018. About four thousand people have stood on that paper since.
One light, one distance, no smiling on command. At the end of every sitting the pictures go up on a monitor and you choose your own - because you are the one who has to look at it for the next three years, and because nobody has ever picked the frame I expected.
Sessions
Four ways to book the room
All of them are the same room and the same light. What changes is how many looks you need and what the picture has to survive.
The actor's set
Two looks in an hour, cut for the way casting platforms actually crop a picture: square, tight, and often in one colour. You leave with the profile frame and the agency frame from the same sitting.
- Two looks
- Square and portrait crops
- Four finals
- Casting-ready sizes
Personal branding
For founders, partners and anyone whose face is about to be on a funding announcement. One frame that is unmistakably you at ninety pixels, plus the wider ones a comms lead will ask for later.
- One look
- Four finals
- Stage and press crops
- Usage in perpetuity
Author and speaker portraits
A jacket photograph is printed at thirty millimetres and sometimes in one colour, so it is built for legibility first. The festival and conference frames come out of the same hour.
- One look
- Jacket crop
- Programme crop
- Four finals
The studio day
Your whole team through the same light on the same afternoon, in fifteen-minute slots, so the team page stops looking like it was assembled over six years by six different phones.
- Up to 24 people
- Two finals each
- Matched set
- Gallery in five days
Not sure which one you need? Send five lines about what the picture is for and I will tell you.
Send five linesHow it goes
From the first email to the files
Five steps, no surprises, and one of them happens while you are still in the room.
A note about the job
Tell me what the picture is for - a casting profile, a jacket, a team page - and I will tell you which sitting fits and what to wear. Five lines, not a questionnaire.
A date and a deposit
Half the fee holds the slot. Studio days run Tuesday to Thursday; single sittings usually fit within a fortnight, and same-week if something falls out.
The sitting, and you choose
Forty minutes to an hour in the room. I shoot tethered, so the frames land on the monitor as we go and you pick yours full size before you leave.
Files in five working days
Retouching is skin, stray hair and a crooked collar - not a different face. Print and web sizes, and the raw set stays on file here for a year.
Rates
What a session costs
Everything is quoted per session, not per hour, and the number on this sheet is the number on the invoice.
The single sitting
One person, one look, the default for anyone who needs a picture that will still be right in two years.
- 45 minutes
- 1 look
- 4 retouched finals
- Files in five days
The long sitting
For a book jacket, a speaker page or a launch. More looks, more room to loosen up, and frames in both crops so nobody has to ask for a different one later.
- 2 hours
- 3 looks
- 10 retouched finals
- Portrait and landscape crops
The studio day
A whole team through the same light in one afternoon, in fifteen-minute slots, so the page holds together.
- Up to 24 people
- 1 look each
- 2 finals each
- Gallery in five days
On location
The same setup carried to your office when moving thirty people across town costs more than moving one photographer.
- Half or full day
- Travel within the Randstad
- 2 finals each
- Power and 3 by 4 metres required
Prices exclude VAT and cover unlimited use of the finished frames, for as long as you want them. Half the fee holds the date; the balance falls due when the gallery goes out.
In their words
What people say afterwards
Mostly some version of the same sentence: that they did not expect to like it.
I have had six sets of headshots taken in eleven years and this is the first time I have used all four pictures. The hard-light one got me two auditions in a month.
Twenty-four people, one afternoon, and not a single complaint - which for a team photo day is the actual benchmark. The page finally looks like one company rather than six years of phones.
My publisher asked who took it, which has never happened before. It holds up at thirty millimetres in one colour, which is the only thing a jacket photograph really has to do.
I booked it because we had nothing usable and a round closing in three weeks. I keep recommending it because Marit got me out in forty-five minutes and I made my next meeting.
Elsewhere
Published, shown and shortlisted
The work leaves the room occasionally.
Questions
Everything people ask before booking
And a few things they only ask afterwards.
What should I wear?
Bring three tops, plain, in colours you already own and already like. Avoid tight patterns and anything with a logo. There is a steamer by the door and a jar of clean collar stays, because a crooked collar ruins more pictures than bad light does.
How long until I get the files?
Five working days for a single sitting, five for a studio day too. If you have a deadline inside that, say so when you book and I will usually work to it at no extra cost - it is a scheduling problem, not a surcharge.
Can I use the pictures anywhere?
Yes. The fee covers unlimited use of the finished frames for as long as you want them - website, print, press, socials, agency platforms, all of it. There is no licence to renew and no per-use charge. I keep the right to show the work here and in my own portfolio.
What if I hate having my picture taken?
Almost everybody says this, including people who do it for a living. It is why you watch the frames land on the monitor as we go rather than waiting three days to find out. Seeing one good picture of yourself early changes how the rest of the hour goes.
How much retouching do you do?
Skin texture stays. What goes is temporary - a spot, a stray hair, a shirt that has bunched at the shoulder. If you want more than that I will do it, but I will say once that people recognise you by the things you were thinking of asking me to remove.
Do you photograph outside the studio?
For teams, yes - I carry the same light and the same paper to your office anywhere in the Randstad, and I need about three by four metres and a power socket. For single sittings the room is better, and cheaper.
Booking
Tell me what the picture is for
Five lines is plenty. What it is for, roughly when, and how many of you there are.
Received. You will hear back from the studio within two working days, usually the same one.
- 1 A reply within two working days With the dates that are actually open and which sitting I think fits what you described.
- 2 Half the fee holds the slot One invoice, one link. Nothing else is due until the gallery goes out.
- 3 A note about what to wear Sent a week before, and short enough to read on a phone at the tram stop.