Demonstration piece
Law and tax practice — identity without stock photography
Entrance, a partner's office in late light, a client meeting, a corridor. Brand material for a firm that would rather not look like three competing websites using the same stock image.
Brief
Brand sequence for a law and tax advisory practice: Entrance to a law office, glass door with a discreet plate, warm wood interior. A partner's office in late afternoon light: dark walnut desk, brass lamp, documents. A lawyer in a dark suit walking through a glass-walled corridor with a folder. An adviser in a green blazer talking with a client across a meeting table, both relaxed and engaged. A client leaving down a bright corridor. Natural office lighting, warm restrained palette, calm and deliberate pace, photorealistic documentary cinematography, no readable document content, no brand logos.
Notes
The constraint this removes
Law firm websites look identical because they draw on the same stock libraries. The same smiling man in a suit stands on three competing firms in one city.
An interiors shoot and a portrait session are two separate costs, and a practice has an organisational problem on top: a shooting day pulls the team off work and lets a crew into rooms where client files sit.
What changes
The material is made for a specific interior, register and tone rather than picked from a catalogue. It can show work and a client conversation without touching anyone’s confidentiality, because there are no real files and no real people in frame.
Where the line sits
Figures in frame are anonymous and do the job stock photography does today: they build atmosphere, they do not make statements. What is not allowed:
- naming a generated figure as a named member of the firm
- putting a client testimonial or recommendation in their mouth
- generating a likeness of an identifiable real person
On social platforms the material is labelled as AI-generated. That is a platform rule, not a matter of taste.