Salesloft Brand guidelines · 2026Contact
Brand guidelines  ·  Photography

Golden hour
confidence.

Not staged business stock — real professionals, caught in real light, doing real work. The customer is the hero of every frame: natural light, honest faces, open space.
01

Five principles, one register.

Every image answers to the same idea: the customer is the hero. Confident people in a bright, open world, photographed like an editorial — never staged like an ad. If a frame could sell anything, it sells nothing.

Real light. Real faces. Real work. Nobody performs for the camera — a portrait may hold your gaze, but it never poses.

Natural light only.

Directional sun with true shadows, one setting for every frame — never flat studio light.

Authentic, not airbrushed.

Freckles, wrinkles, gray hair, skin texture. Faces with character, minimally retouched.

Warm earth, cool glass.

Warmth lives on people and wood. Blue lives in glass, sky, and distance. Never a global orange cast.

Open, aspirational spaces.

Desert modernism: glass, concrete, wood — and a horizon. The office is never the whole world.

Quiet confidence.

Faint smiles, focus, and thought. No burst laughter, no high-fives, no performing for the camera.

02

The look at a glance.

One world, one setting: warm sun on people, hazy blue in the world beyond. The desert horizon ties every frame together.

Environmental portrait, glass office with desert view
Environmental · wide
Closeup portrait, natural window light
Closeup · window light
Deep in work, golden hour
Action · deep in work
On a headset call by the window
Action · on the call
Moody window-light portrait
Closeup · low key
03

One setting, every frame.

Every image is lit the same way: warm directional sun on the subject, hazy blue daylight in the world beyond. What shifts is only how much of the world the crop lets in — never two looks, one setting framed differently.

The setting in close: warm sun, world melted to bokeh

In close.

Closeups · portraits

Tight crops melt the world into creamy bokeh, so the warm side of the setting carries the frame. Same sun, same world — just less of it in view.

The setting in wide: same sun, blue world in frame

In wide.

Action · environment

Step back and the glass, sky, and distance hold their hazy blue while the same sun rakes the subject. The blue arrives with the world, not with a new setup.

04

Warmth belongs to people. Blue belongs to the world.

The signature balance is a temperature split, not a filter — and the world is always in frame. Every image keeps a glimpse of something beyond the office: a horizon through glass, distance, daylight. Grade stays muted and film-like — soft bloom, gentle haze, subtle grain. Never crisp, never neon, never HDR.

Warm side · the subject
Skin tones · golden, sunlit, alive — the warmest thing in frame.
Materials · wood, leather, concrete catching sun.
Wardrobe · stays neutral; warmth comes from light, not clothes.
Cool side · the world
Glass & sky · hazy, desaturated blue — the counterweight.
Distance · desert hills and horizons soften toward blue.
Horizon · a line of distance in frame reads as possibility — new places, room to move. Never seal the frame with walls.
Rule · if the whole frame reads orange, the image is off-brand.
05

Three shot types.

Every image in the library is one of three shots. Know which one you need before you brief, generate, or crop.

Closeup portrait

Closeup.

01

Face and character, shallow depth. The library leans on these: the hero reads in the eyes.

Environmental portrait

Environmental.

02

The person in their world — posture relaxed, space doing half the talking.

Action and candid

Action.

03

Mid-gesture, mid-conversation, mid-stride. Nobody looks at the camera.

06

Faces with character.

Our people look like the people who actually do this work — every age, every background, nobody generic. If a face could model for anyone, it models for no one.

Portrait with character, golden hour
Texture & light
Confident direct gaze
Direct gaze
Two colleagues absorbed at a screen
Absorbed in work
Expression · the register
Range · faint smile to deep focus. The ceiling is an amused grin at the tail end of a laugh — never the peak.
Gaze · at the work, at each other, or off-frame. Direct-to-camera is reserved for closeup portraits.
Character · specific features — freckles, gray stubble, lines. Reject the default handsome face.
Diversity · rotate age, ethnicity, and gender across every set — the library must look like the market.
Wardrobe · neutral by default
Palette · charcoal, navy, off-white, soft blue. Tailored, not fussy.
Two-shots · contrast in value — one dark, one light. Matching outfits read as staged stock.
Warm accents · at most one per frame, and prefer it on a prop (chair, mug), not a person.
07

Shot like a candid, built like a frame.

The camera behaves like a colleague who happened to look up — layered foregrounds, shared focal points, natural distance. Nothing is posed, but nothing is accidental.

Composition example: foreground layer, natural spacing, mid-gesture
Foreground · distance · mid-gesture
Foreground layer · a blurred laptop, doorframe, or plant between camera and subject makes the frame feel caught, not staged.
Shared focus · in two-shots, point both gazes at one thing — a screen, a document. Locked mutual eye contact freezes into stock.
Natural distance · close enough to share a screen, far enough that shoulders never touch.
Mid-action · hands mid-gesture, sentences mid-flight. The moment before or after the peak, never the pose.
Layered depth · three planes — foreground, subject, horizon. The glimpse of a bigger world keeps the office from closing in.
08

This, not that.

Every rule here was learned by breaking it. When an image feels like stock, it is failing one of these.

ThisDirectional sun raking the face, one side in soft shadow. Not thatFlat, even light on every surface — the catalog look.
ThisHazy desert hills and sky, far and soft behind glass. Not thatCity skyscrapers dominating the window — corporate-finance stock.
ThisNeutral wardrobe, value contrast between two people. Not thatCoordinated warm outfits on both subjects.
ThisA quiet grin at the tail end of a laugh, eyes on each other. Not thatPeak open-mouth laughter, high-fives, celebration theater.
ThisSpecific faces: gray stubble, freckles, lines that say something. Not thatThe default handsome model with a resume-free face.
ThisMinimal, uncluttered space — concrete, wood, daylight. Not thatProp shelves, lamp-lit corners, evening-office mood.
ThisMuted film grade, soft bloom, gentle haze, subtle grain. Not thatCrisp digital clarity, saturated cyan skies, HDR punch.
09

The generation kit.

This library is AI-generated, so the prompt is our photography direction. Assemble every prompt from four blocks and finish with the style suffix. One suffix carries the whole look.

Subject — age, features, wardrobe+ Action — mid-gesture, gaze, why+ Environment — space, view, distance+ The style suffix

The style suffix.

Every shot type
warm directional sunlight raking the subject, soft shadow falling across one side, hazy blue daylight in the glass, sky and distance beyond, floor-to-ceiling glass with faint desert hills far in the distance, background heavily out of focus with creamy bokeh, subject sharply isolated, warm skin tones, gentle atmospheric haze, soft highlight bloom, muted desaturated film-like color grade, subtle film grain, candid documentary style, 85mm f/1.8, shallow depth of field, authentic unretouched skin texture, editorial photography --ar 4:3
One suffix, every frame. The crop decides how much blue the frame lets in — closeups melt the world into warm bokeh, wider frames let it breathe. The specific space belongs in the environment block, not here.

Prompt craft.

What makes them work
Describe the end state, not the gear · "background heavily out of focus with creamy bokeh" beats trusting "85mm f/1.8" alone.
Give emotions a reason · "a faint smile as if pleased with his progress" lands; "smiling" overshoots into ad-grin.
Never leave people generic · specify age, features, and wardrobe for every subject, or the model fills in default-stock.
State distances and postures · "close enough to share the screen, a small gap between shoulders" — relational beats absolute.

The stock-smell test.

QA before an image ships
Is anyone aware of the camera who shouldn't be?
Is the light flat, or the grade crisp and digital?
Is a face generically handsome — no age, no texture, no story?
Are two people dressed alike, locked in mutual eye contact, or shoulder to shoulder?
Is there clutter, a lamp-lit evening mood, or a skyline swallowing the window?
One yes = regenerate. The suffix is the starting point; this list is the finish line.
10

Image references.

This chapter shows the system; the reference set in Figma holds the source images at full resolution, organized by shot type.

The reference set.

Closeups, environmental portraits, and action & candid — the full-resolution originals behind this chapter.

Open in Figma
Photography Salesloft 09 · 13