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JPhotosessions

Capturing Souls

01/09/2026

Today I had the pleasure of taking business portraits during the kick-off of the Women at Microsoft Employee Resource Group.

And yes, my Lightroom screen currently looks like this. 📸

One person after another, each with their own personality, energy and idea of how they want to show up professionally.

That is exactly why I enjoy these portrait sessions.

A good business portrait is more than a nice photo for LinkedIn or Teams. It is part of how people represent themselves, and collectively, how an organisation represents itself.

For companies, there is another benefit too.

I take care of the entire process. From registrations before the event, to guiding people through a short and relaxed portrait session, editing the photographs and personally delivering each participant’s images through their own private gallery.

The organising team can focus on the event.
Employees walk away with professional photographs they can actually use.
And the company builds a library of authentic images of the people behind the brand.

Especially at an event built around community, visibility and connection, that feels very appropriate.

Thank you Women at Microsoft for having me at your kick-off today.

And for other organisations planning an employee event, ERG gathering, leadership day or company kick-off, portraits can be much more than an extra activity on the programme.

They can give people something valuable that stays with them long after the event is over.

Great working with you Bo Havinga, Amrutha Sivaraman! 😎📸

31/08/2026

Nobody warned me how weird becoming a full-time photographer would be. 🤪😄 📸

Especially after spending 25 years in corporate marketing.

I thought leaving corporate life would mean having more control over my time.

Turns out I mostly exchanged Outlook meetings for Calendly bookings, PowerPoint decks for Lightroom catalogs, and a laptop bag for several kilos of camera gear.

And I love it.

One day I’m photographing 50 people at ING Nederland’s Cedar office in Amsterdam. The next I’m shooting an event at Microsoft ’s Schiphol office. Then suddenly I’m living on a ship of Uniworld Boutique River Cruises for two weeks, photographing people and places while slowly making my way from Amsterdam to Vienna.

My calendar has become wonderfully unpredictable.

I’ve photographed more than 2,000 business portraits in the first six months of this year alone. That means I’ve also had thousands of very short conversations with people who usually start by telling me some variation of:

“I hate having my picture taken.”

Five minutes later, we’re laughing.

Then there’s everything nobody sees.

The registrations.
The planning.
The lighting tests.
The batteries charging all over my apartment.
The editing.
The private galleries.
The emails.
The invoices.
And the strangely convincing voice in my head explaining why I definitely need another lens.

Being a photographer, I’ve discovered, is actually a surprisingly small amount of pressing a shutter button.

It’s part photographer, part marketer, part psychologist, part logistics manager, part IT support, part accountant, and occasionally professional furniture mover.

But the biggest difference from my old life is this:

I create something tangible every day.

A portrait someone is proud to use.

A moment at an event nobody else noticed.

A photograph that might still mean something to someone ten or twenty years from now.

At 49, I walked away from the corporate world to find out whether I could make a living doing something I genuinely loved.

Turns out I can.

It’s chaotic, physical, unpredictable, sometimes exhausting, and absolutely nothing like the career I had planned.

Same guy.

Different life ambitions. 📸

27/08/2026

Happy to have been back at the Microsoft MCAPS Start event today, doing portraits again. 📸

One thing I’ve learned from photographing large numbers of employees is that taking the photograph is actually the easy part.

Organising everything around it is where the work is.

So when a company hires me for a portrait day, I handle the entire process.

I set up the registration and scheduling beforehand, employees choose their own time slot, and I keep track of who is coming when.

On the day itself, each person gets a short, relaxed portrait session. I guide them through the posing, pay attention to the details and make sure we get a professional portrait that still looks like them.

After the shoot, I select and process the images, create an individual private gallery for every person, and personally send them access to their photographs.

So the team that hired me doesn’t have to coordinate registrations, create schedules, distribute photographs or answer questions about where someone can find their images.

They can focus on their core business.

I take care of the rest.

It’s a workflow I’ve developed specifically for corporate portrait photography, and it means I can photograph anything from a small team to hundreds of employees without creating an extra administrative project for the client.

Today, I got to do it all again at Microsoft Nederland

And the fun part: making a lot of people look good in five minutes. 🙂

25/08/2026

When I was 36 I broke my knee in a bicycle accident. At 40 I was in the best shape of my life.

After 3 surgeries, doctors told me I had to accept that I would not be able to run anymore, play tennis or do most sports I love doing.

Heck, just walking or standing turned out to be challenge! But sports are in my DNA. I need to move. So I adapted.

I believe that as long as you have a goal you will find a way. Despite my limitations I set myself the goal to be FFF: ‘Ferociously Fit at Forty’.

So I educated myself on movement and a healthy diet and completed NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine) with a Certified Personal Trainer degree. With this knowledge, discipline and hard-core training I managed to get in the best shape of my life at 40.

Much like my transformation then, I transformed my 25 year corporate marketing career into running my own business now.

And with a full knee replacement at 50 I am now also running around on the padel courts!🎾

My goal is to help people and the world’s leading brands reach their goals by telling their story through engaging and captivating photos.

I now proudly work with brands like Microsoft, ING Nederland, ServiceNow, Accenture, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Salesforce, Workday, CSU Cleaning Services and many others to capture their stories. 📸

Looking forward to help you tell yours!

23/08/2026

Want to feel rich?

Don’t look at your bank account.

Look at your photos.

The people you love. The places you’ve been.
The ridiculous nights. The ordinary Tuesdays you didn’t realize you’d miss. The people who aren’t here anymore. The younger version of yourself who had no idea what was coming.

We tend to measure wealth by what we’ve accumulated.

But scroll far enough back through your photos and you’ll find another kind of wealth.

A life you actually lived.

And unlike most things we own, photographs tend to become more valuable with time.

https://jphotosessions.com

19/08/2026

The best photographs are often the ones you almost didn’t take.

A glance between two people.
Someone looking through a window, lost in thought.
A hand on a shoulder.
A shaft of light that lasts for a few seconds.

Nothing staged. Nothing spectacular.

Just something you noticed.

And that, to me, is a big part of being a photographer.

Because the moment you notice it, it’s already disappearing.

The expression changes. The light moves. Someone walks away. Life carries on.

You’re not stopping time.

You’re just paying enough attention to save a tiny piece of it.

18/08/2026

Four years ago, I walked away from a career that looked pretty good on paper.

A good salary. A corporate marketing title. Security. Twenty-five years of experience.

To some people, leaving all that behind to pursue a photography career probably looked like a terrible move.

To me, staying would have been the terrible career move.

Perspective is a funny thing.

One person sees risk.
Another sees freedom.

One sees someone who gave up a successful career.
Another sees someone who finally had the courage to start one.

Today I make a great living taking photographs.

I meet thousands of people. I get invited into companies, events and places I would otherwise never see. I create something that is mine. And most mornings, I actually look forward to going to work.

Do I sometimes miss the perks of corporate life? Of course.

But I’ve learned that a successful life isn’t necessarily the one that looks most impressive from the outside.

It’s the one that feels right when you’re living it.

Following my heart didn’t make my life perfect.

It made it mine.

And that turned out to be worth a lot more than I thought.

A special thanks to all the great people that I have had the privilege of working with at
Nederland, , Cleaning Services, the Netherlands, , , Telecom, , Boutique River Cruises, University Rotterdam, Consultancy, Juliana International Airport - SXM and many more!

12/08/2026

Amsterdam has some really cool graffiti alleys

09/08/2026

Dad playing at Cyrille’s musical bday sessions. 🎹 🎼

07/08/2026

I photographed over 2000 business professionals in the first six months of this year for companies like ING Nederland and Microsoft Nederland

So many started with, “I’m not photogenic.”

And ended with, “Oh wow, I really like those!”

That’s why I believe great business portraits have very little to do with being photogenic, and everything to do with making people feel comfortable.

If your company is planning new portraits, let’s talk.

https://jphotosessions.com/business-portraits

Adres

Boterdiepstraat 55-1
Amsterdam
1079SV

Website

https://janpaulheijmans.myportfolio.com/work

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