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Part 2: A Day With Gallo Center for the Arts
Last look, we had gone through the process of capturing environmental portraits of the Gallo Center for the Arts team. Today we’ll cover a little bit of the process I used to capture their headshots. When capturing corporate headshots, my goal is to capture a clean consistent look for all individuals of the group. Something that can throw a curve ball for people are individuals with glasses. Certain lighting setups do not lend themselves well when photographing someone with glasses, as the lights will reflect from their lenses. As well, one does not want to have different lighting setups, as that breaks away from the goal of getting consistent looks.
For these headshots I opted for a large umbrella as my main light, positioned camera right and slightly in front of the subjects. Behind camera is a strobe that is bouncing light into a v-flat wall, working as my fill. On camera left is a white v-flat that will bounce light back onto the subject, to lighten up the shadow side of the face some. Lastly right in front of the subject is an additional white foam board to help bounce light under the chin.
Light diagram layout of setup.
The back light would require a little height adjustment for those with glasses in order to not get any reflection bouncing back. That and a little play on head tilt, ensured very little glare on the lenses.
This look steps away from the typical wrapped light look of most headshots and gives a little dimension to the image with the addition of some light shadowing. Which for a theater group, I think works really well. Let me know what you think about the setup or final images in the comments below.
Part 1: A Day With Gallo Center for the Arts
I recently had the chance to work with the team over at Gallo Center for the Arts, which was such an exciting opportunity for me. In collaborating with Doug, who is their Director of Marketing & Public Relations, we came up with the idea to capture some environmental shots of the team as well as the standard headshots. With everything planned, the next step was for me to figure out how to best capture everyone in the Mary Stuart Rogers theater space. I typically work from my studio, where I’ve got things fairly dialed in for my style of shooting, so going on location presents a new set of challenges, though nothing I couldn’t meet head on.
In working to capture an environmental shot that helped to highlight the person and the theater space, the main challenge was, how to light the environment? I wanted to keep the space low lit, to give the feeling like whoever I was photographing was the star of the stage. So the first thing I did was work find a good base layer to serve as my plate shot. You can see in the following images, as I bring in lights to illuminate the subjects and then add additional lights to illuminate the lower section of the seating and finally the plate shot.
With everything dialed in, it was go time! You can see the final results below.
I just love how the environmental shots came out with the interplay of the theater, the canvas to break up the scene a little bit and the subject. What challenges have you faced while out on location? How did you work to get the shot while working in those spaces? Check back in for the second half where we go over the more formal headshots.
Headshot Wardrobe
Lost on what to wear for your headshots? Here’s a quick guide to help make the selection process easier.
Congratulations you booked a headshot session, now comes the fun part, planning what to wear to help make that winning image. First off, I’m going to define my idea of what a headshot is. It’s an image that captures your personality, has clean elements (backdrop and wardrobe), and crops from about mid chest up to just a little above the hair line. But don’t confuse the simple parameters as this being something that is as easy as standing in front of the dmv camera to get your driver’s license image. Plus how many of us actually like our driver’s license image? I suppose if we did, it’d be our headshot photo of choice across all our social platforms :)!
Okay, let’s talk wardrobe! The focus of your headshot should be on your winning face and personality, and the outfit is there to work with that…not distract. What could distract? In general, clothes that are loose fitting, are bright in color, or have large patterns. Avoiding clothing that meet the above criteria will help to keep the focus on you and not your clothing. Have a look at the below gallery to see some examples and I’ll deep dive into why to avoid these items of clothing. I included shots on different color backgrounds to also show how the background selection can affect the wardrobe choice as well.
Loose clothing might feel good, but it hides your form and while some of us may shy away from that, the purpose of the headshot is to present our best self forward to the world. A well fitting shirt or top will draw clean lines that won’t hide you from the world, but help make you pop!
Color plays an important role in your wardrobe selection and here’s why. If the color is too bright or doesn’t work well with one’s skin tone, it can easily distract or take center stage. A little bit of color is great as it helps to provide that pop, but that’s all you want..a pop and all eyes on your amazing face. Overly bright or neon like colors, will easily draw the attention away from you and that’s no good.
Last but not least, patterns. Patterns are fun to get lost in and again not something you want the viewers of your headshot to do when looking at your image. The one instance where a pattern can work, is if it is a tight one that almost makes it look solid. Ultimately your best choice will be a solid colored top.
I hope this quick guide has helped to ease the process of selecting what to wear for your headshot session. Let me know your thoughts and other tips in the comments below.