Kids Will Be Kids

May 31, 2009 | Filed Under family, headshots, kids | 1 Comment 

Today my 7-year old daughter Keely, tried her hand at doing face painting … on my 2-year old son, Henry.

I happened to be setting up for headshots I’m doing on Tuesday, and my daughter decided now that she has mastered the art of painting on faces, to try her hand at doing photography. She gave Henry explicit directions on how to pose (which of course went on deaf ears), and then manned the camera (with my careful eyes on her making sure she wouldn’t break anyting) and snapped off a few shots. I was able to salvage a few somewhat usable images. I think it’s time for me to spend some time now educating Keely on the art of photography. I think she is showing a liking to it.

Actor Headshot

June 2, 2008 | Filed Under headshots | Leave a Comment 

Sunday I had the pleasure of shooting headshots for Valeria, a Bel Air teenager who will be attending acting camp this summer. She needed to have some 8×10 headshot prints so she gave me a call to set up an appointment.

The headshots were all taken at her home (where her mother makes some delicious lemonade) in the family room / living room area. The home had a beautiful wood floor, and it made a great background as I shot from high above.

I think Valeria had a great time — once she got over a bit of nervousness in the beginning — and I hope I was able to help her land a great role in the future.

Lighting Information:

Clamshell lighting with two 43″ umbrella’s and 580EXs.

Top umbrella – 1/8 power
Bottom umbrella – 1/32 power

Hairlight from snooted 285HV at 1/16 power

Natural Light Headshot

May 20, 2008 | Filed Under headshots | Leave a Comment 

Recently I’ve been shooting a lot of headshots, and am finding myself really enjoying this type of photography. Perhaps it has to do with those windows to the soul — the eyes. Getting these tight headshots gives the person viewing the photograph an excellent view into those windows.

I had been using many off-camera strobes for lighting the previous headshots I’ve taken in the past, which generally means I must stop down my lens into the f/8-f/11 range and thus increasing my depth of field. Which is perfectly fine for a portrait or corporate headshot. With this photo session, I decided to try something different , using the giant softbox that Mother Nature provided — gray cloud-filled skies — and a white foamcore board just below the subject to fill in the shadows. This allowed me to use my 135mm lens at f/2, with a sliver of DOF, and really concentrate on getting the eyes tack sharp to draw the viewer immediately to the eyes.

I’m going to use this technique much more in the future.

Corporate Headshots

May 7, 2008 | Filed Under headshots | 2 Comments 

Monday afternoon I was contracted to photograph seven corporate principals and assistant principals for a local engineering firm. Companies use these type of images for their websites, annual reports, press releases, company publications, etc.

The headshots were taken on-location so not to interrupt their daily workload.

The setup for these photographs was an Alien Bee 800 with large softbox camera right, with a reflector camera left for fill. I also place a foamcore board on table in front of subjects to help fill in light under the chin. I used a blue paper backdrop with an Alien Bee 400 and 40-degree grid to create the background light.

After a Hard Day’s Work

May 3, 2008 | Filed Under headshots | Leave a Comment 

On Monday, I am shooting corporate headshots for a client, so yesterday I was setting up a new lighting scheme from techniques I learned from the Lighting-Essentials workshop I attended last month.

I was resorting to setting a timer on my camera and then running over to the chair to capture myself in the frame to check my lighting. Luckily, after only a few laps from camera to chair and back, my son came home from work. He is on the grounds crew at Mountain Branch Golf Course in Joppa. Of course he was all sweaty and wanted a shower, but he was more than happy to sit in for a couple test shots.

There is something about this image I really like, and I thought I’d share.

This is taken with a large softbox to camera right and a white foamboard camera left. I had a second light with grid hitting the background from left to right. I normally would have the backlight directly behind the subject, but in this test setup I was limited on the amount of space between the subject and the backdrop.

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