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.