head shot – JWNPhoto.com

Articles Tagged with: head shot

I Am Not A Wildlife Photographer…

I’m not a wildlife photographer…

But I love to shoot the birds and bugs in my backyard.

I’m not a landscape photographer…

But I love to capture the beauty around me.

I’m not a sports photographer…

But I love to witness mad skillz, yo.

I’m not a street photographer…

But I love to find art in the moment.

I’m not a fashion photographer…

But I love to collaborate with artists to make something interesting.

I’m not an architectural photographer…

But I love to witness man’s feats of greatness.

I’m not a portrait photographer…

But I love to see a part of a person’s personality conveyed in an image.

I’m not a wedding photographer…

But I love to see a bride looking her best.

I’m not an abstract photographer…

But I love to see the Devil in the details.

I’m not a maternity photographer…

But I love to see a woman becoming a new mother.

I’m not a pet photographer…

But I love to capture an old man saying goodbye to his old best friend.

I’m not a music photographer…

But I love music and I think it’s what saved my life.

I’m not a headshot photographer…

But I love to capture a person the way I see them.

I’m not a fitness photographer…

But I love to capture a person in the best physical shape they can be in.

I’m not an editorial photographer…

But I love to make a portrait that tells a story.

I’m not an event photographer…

But I love an opportunity to score a free beer (or seven).

I’m not a fireworks photographer…

But I love to see things that go boom!

I’m not a travel photographer…

But I love to see new places and faces.

I’m not a fine art photographer…

But I love to stretch my imagination.

I’m not a family photographer…

But I sure do love my family.

I’m not any single kind of photographer.

I’m all of them and none of them.

I’m just a person who loves to capture life in a bottle so I can open it up and share it with everyone else every once in a while.

Summer Time

It’s been a very busy year so far – July 4th seems to sneak up and remind me just how fast time slips by. I’ve been busy growing my other business while still working this one. In fact, I surprised my crew yesterday by dragging in a light and a backdrop to the office for some surprise headshots:

Rashaud

Ben

Speaking of headshots, I’ve been doing a lot lately for various professionals in the area. A few years ago, you could only thrive from doing headshots in a major market, but because of social media every professional needs one, not just actors and comedians.

Here’s a couple I did this past week:

Dr. Kelsey Harris

Dr. Molly Slade

I’ve also discovered that my Fuji X-T1 is quite the capable headshot camera. The two headshots of the guys in my crew were taken with the Fuji, while the two doctors were taken using my Nikon D800. While the flexibility gained by the controls, full frame sensor, and lens selection of the Nikon are paramount to shooting professionally, the Fuji’s results are almost indistinguishable when the output is simply an internet profile picture. The only drawback I found with my current lighting rig is that I need to close down the aperture on the Fuji a couple of stops because it shoots natively at ISO 200 and it’s a cropped sensor. That leads to more depth of field when shooting with strobe lights. For headshots like these, it’s not a problem though. For creative portraiture using these strobes it might be limiting, but I think a ND filter or two would help in that case. The look of a lens at it’s proper focal length that you get from a full frame sensor when compared to a cropped one can’t be beat, but like the US Soccer team’s performance in the World Cup game against Belgium, it comes really close by giving it its all – And that’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Sorry, I fell into a technical wormhole. Back to the photos…

Shepard Fairey Installation At The Sottile Theater

If you haven’t stopped by the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art to see the exhibit of Shepard Fairey and Jasper Johns, you’ve got ’til July 12th to do so. The work is amazing and inspiring. Shepard Fairey has a few installations in the Charleston area, including the one above at the storefront of the Sottile Theater on King Street. There’s also a few murals that he’s put up, such as this one on one of the College of Charleston’s dormitories:

Selective Color Still Lives!

I do love some street art. In the right places, like the back alleys of the city where people store their trash, they bring color and joy. I find the story told by the street artists to be just as compelling as the story told by the architects on the main streets.

The Other Part Of King Street

On another note, every once in a while I get reminded of just how amazing the camera in my pocket (the iPhone) is. I snapped this little dragonfly while walking into a client’s office the other day:

Dragonfly Instagram

I also got to go to a wedding that I wasn’t working at for the first time in a looooong time. I still managed to take a few photos, but only because I wanted to, not because I had to!

Samantha & Jerry

I’ve been seeing as much music as possible and spending some great time with my daughter in the process. We had front row center seats to see the Head and the Heart and Valerie June recently:

The Head and the Heart

Valerie June

At the start of the summer I surprised my daughter during our “school’s out weekend trip to Disney World” with a visit to Universal Studios to see Huey Lewis & The News!

Huey Lewis & the News

Speaking of Disney World, I captured this family photo with a Rokinon fish-eye lens on my Fuji X-T1 while we rode Primeval Whirl in the Animal Kingdom:

The Nienstedt Family

And while we were walking through Epcot’s World Showcase, we ran into some old friends. It’s Paulie Latex and Jenny Jelly of Latex Generation fame! Paul used to sing and play guitar in my band and Jen was our merch girl. I wrote a song about them when we were teenagers about how they would never last. I then wrote a song a few years later about being astonished that they were still together. Now they’ve got 3 girls and have been together for somewhere near 20 years. Holy crap was I wrong!

Latex Generation Family Photo Disney World 2014

Photo by Mrs. Edel

Local artist Patch Whisky asked me to shoot some of his artwork to be reproduced as prints that he’s now selling on his website. It was a different animal to shoot his monsters, but they sat well for the shoot…

Patch Whisky

On the topic of artists, I sadly had to say goodbye to one of my favorite artists who gathered his family up and moved to the West Coast. Here I am getting one last tattoo from Rob Junod at Holy City Tattooing Collective:

Getting the Junod one last time (In Charleston) #holycitytattooingcollective #tattoo #IWantYourSkull #nipslip #organicsweater

Rob Junod & a Shirtless Me

Rob’s wife, Amanda Rose, is a talented hair & make-up artist. I worked with with her recently for Shelly Waters, who hired me to shoot the cover of her upcoming CD. I’m bummed that the Junods had to leave, but I’m happy to see where their journey takes them as they are both immensely talented.

Shelly Waters and Amanda Rose

And finally, since we’re on the topic of tattoos and art, my wife Amy paid a visit to Margo at Holy CIty Tattooing Collective just yesterday to start work on a new piece on her bicep. It’s just an outline in this picture and it already looks amazing!

Amy

I think that about wraps it up for this post. We’re planning a road trip later in the summer, so hopefully I’ll capture some fun photos of that adventure. It’s gonna be filled with plains, trains, and automobiles for sure!

Lazy Days of Summer

This has been the longest I’ve waited between blog posts since I’ve launched this site – What happened? Nothing at all. I think the distractions of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Vine, etc have been satisfying my need to communicate in a very basic and concise way. I’ve also been busy with my businesses, my family, and trying to enjoy the summer (albeit a wet soggy one so far). So, I’m going to share some of my photos since last we spoke on this old blog of mine…

That photo at the top was taken this weekend. For the first time since summer began, we made it out to the beach! I went specifically to capture a sunset on Sullivans Island, and I didn’t come home empty handed. A few days before was the 4th of July, where we went to Folly Beach to check out the fireworks. Here’s a shot I made that evening:

More importantly, my brother-in-law & his girlfriend are having a baby, and Mira’s finally started to look the part of an expectant mother:

I’ve also been shooting lots of headshots and commercial stuff. During one shoot for a local veterinary hospital, one of the vets may have posed for a shot of her latest tattoo…

Dr. Davis' new tattoo #DSLR #Nikon #JWNPhoto #Tattoo

Speaking of headshots, it only took a year to get Dr. Colleen Boylston in front of my camera again to update her headshot:

I’ve recently started watercolor painting stuff on a whim. I found some $12 kit at the bookstore and found it utterly relaxing and fun. Here’s a close-up of one of my creations:

Another watercolor painting based on another photograph I made - This one was at Kiawah Island in the spring. The pollen created a lot of cool shapes on the sand. #watercolor #art #painting #CHS #Kiawah

I had one of the most unfortunately soggy and stormy beach weddings ever to shoot, and the couple certainly made the best of it. Here’s a shot of their muddy feet underneath the gazebo on Sullivans Island:

I continue to add ink into my left arm. Margo has been a blessing in this department. She’s really turning my arm into a fleshy art gallery, and I couldn’t be more excited as I have a lot of skin to color in before this sleeve is done.

Adding background to my arm tonight - As always @MargoVenomous rules! #roadtofullsleeve #Tattoo #water #Flames #patchwhiskey #CaiaKoopman #TatianaSuarez

Of course, we took another trip to Disney World. I believe this was trip #4 on the year (I got the family annual passes this past Christmas). In an effort to keep things fresh, I’ve resorted to street style photography of people in the park. I love this shot because it truly doesn’t look like we’re in a theme park (which is not an easy feat to pull off):

We took a trip upstate to Freedom Weekend Aloft to check out the hot air balloons. I may have had drank some bravery during the festival as I was running right up to the balloons and snapping away. This was my favorite balloon shot from the trip:

As far as my other favorite past time is concerned (live music), there has been no shortage of fun this summer in that department. One of the lowcountry’s best events is the annual First Flush Festival out on Wadmalaw Island. This year’s headliners were Old Crow Medicine Show and they were pretty damn awesome.

And I couldn’t help but take advantage of the scenery at the tea plantation and the tattooed attendees. I love this shot of to willing subjects:

Over at the Music Farm, on of my favorite singer/songwriters, Ryan Bingham put on a kick-ass show:

Those are just some of the highlights of my summer so far. I’ll be back to regularly updating this blog now that I’ve had a little break. Thanks for having me back. TTYS

Charleston CPA Nails It

Just a quick shout out to the gang at Molony & Phipps, LLC who had me come to their offices recently to create some head shots for their new website. The woman in the shot up top impressed me because she nailed that on the very first click! I usually see a huge progression as I ease my subjects into getting their portrait made. The first shot is usually looks a little on the nervous side, and I have to work a bit to find the best expression for the what the photo will be used for.

I remember taking the shot and chimping the back of my camera in amazement and saying, “You’ve done this before!” Some people are just naturals 😉

Doing Shots

I shoot a lot of headshots. To some, it may seem like a pretty vanilla practice in the world of photography – A plain background and a simple shot of a face. To me, I think it’s one of the most intimately challenging things to do with a camera!

The expression says it all. The reality is that they are reflecting the vibe you put out to them. You want them to forget about the camera and just be themselves, but I’m under no illusion that that’s consistently possible in a 15 minute session. Most of my headshots are for business people who don’t have 2 hours to nail their headshot perfectly. For most of my clients, it’s a very quick interaction. For that, I’ve got to influence them as positively as possible.

Injecting confidence into a subject is tough, especially if you have 10 of them to do in a day. I’m challenged with not only keeping my spirits up, but lifting theirs within minutes of meeting them. Shooting a lot of event portraits has really tuned my skills for this kind of scenario. Once I get a rhythm going, I know the sessions will be good.

I’ve also put together a mental rolodex of lighting setups for various types of clients. the shot directly above was done with just the modeling lights and a very wide open aperture to give the portrait a shallow depth of field. This works well for some girls because of the extremely soft lighting. For guys, I like to have a sharp edge light on their cheeks like in this shot below:

My favorite setup at the moment is to literally bathe my subjects in soft light from above and below. It’s what I used on the photo at the top of this post. It’s so flattering, and also quite forgiving as it fills in laugh lines and eyes so nicely. It makes post production a breeze! Here’s another shot with this lighting setup:

Required Viewing For Head-shot Sessions

Duncan Davidson: Why do we hate seeing photos of ourselves?

The Phillips Team

The term “re-shoot” can be a scary word when you’re dealing with real estate agents. There are so many different scenarios that play out in your mind as to why someone would want to do one. Also, when you are creating something for someone else, the fear of rejection is immense. Luckily, when Deborah called me from the Shirley Phillips Team to re-shoot their head shots, it was because they had expanded, and wanted a new team shot.

Shirley also had her head shot redone, mainly because she liked her new hairdo 😉 I really think she looks like Hollywood royalty here. What a beautiful woman!

And here’s the newest member of Shirley’s team, Edmund Greenberg. I told him to give me his best Brad Pitt face, and I think he did pretty good. Very cool, Ed, very cool.

I really enjoy shooting faces. People have countless expressions to capture and the challenge of making them look comfortable and convey a look, whether it’s confidence, sexiness, professionalism, happiness, etc, is really a tough yet fun nut to crack with the right client. Getting the right look takes time, and I’m learning that I have to educate my clients beforehand that a good head shot is not done with one quick click.

Of all of the technical stuff I’ve learned about photography, none of it compares to the actual art of connecting with a person on the human level. As much as we lust after the latest light modifier or craziest low-light defying DSLR or ridiculously fast and expensive glass, our gear is nothing without being out in front of our subjects and communicating with them. Making them happy is the ultimate goal here, not some technical feat with the camera. A technically perfect photo of nothing special is so much less valuable than a less-than-perfect shot of an amazing moment or expression. Besides, you need to ask yourself, “Why am I doing this in the first place?”

For me, It has become simply about making people happy. Making people see how I see them, and how I believe the world sees them. Some days it’s very difficult, but I truly try to find the best in someone and exploit that. We all have things about ourselves that we dislike, and often those little bugs in our appearance are what we focus on. Trying to make people look past those things and helping them see themselves the way the rest of the world sees them is important to me. It can be life changing for some, and each time that happens I feel the karma train pulling up to my station.

Shooting The Boss

No, not The Boss, although I’d be gushing about that non-stop for weeks if I could ;). I’m talking about the broker in charge of Carolina One Real Estate’s Main Street office, Christina Ellis. I call her the boss, because she’s my wife’s broker.

There’s just a little bit of stress when you get tasked to shoot a head shot for your wife’s boss. Not just the usual responsibility of making someone happy with the way they look (trust me, most people cringe at the thought of having their picture taken, so us photogs have to damn near have a psychology degree to convince people that you’ll make sure they look their best), but the responsibility of making your wife not look like a jerk for referring you if you botch the job!

Luckily, it would take a complete failure of epic proportions to botch a job like this – Christina needs no help from me to look good. She’s naturally photogenic, so the only thing I need to worry about is getting the light right. Here’s the diagram of the white background, which was a reversible collapsible background from Adorama. Note my method of lighting the background with bounce umbrellas and feathering the light from them to give me some rim lighting for the subject.

I had the softbox right up close to her. In fact, it was so close that I had my assistant, aka my wife Amy, hold the bottom lip of the box up so it wouldn’t get in the shot. For the black side, I had to ditch the umbrellas and use snoots to focus the light so it wouldn’t influence the blackness of the background. The snoots are actually just beer cozies with the bottoms cut off. It’s an ingenius idea I learned from wedding photographer David Ziser in one of his Kelby Training videos.

One of the problems that arose is something that I’ve been dealing with for quite a while now. My go-to medium zoom lens is a Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8. About 6 months or so ago it started to get stuck at 24mm when twisting the zoom ring. It’s very annoying, but I can just pull the lens from the front cap and it will move. I was ineligible for warranty coverage because I bought a display model, so it’s considered used. Another problem is that it’s not sealed well at all, so there is a ridiculous amount of dust inside the lens. It’s not noticeable at large apertures, but if I venture past f/11, it’s unusable. The worst problem of all though is the random focusing issues, which is what plagued me during this shoot. I can fire off a series of shots and some will be blurry for no good reason, other’s will back focus a few inches so that the ears are the only thing that’s sharp, and if I’m lucky, one will be just right. This is not just annoying, it’s a hazard! My favorite shot expression-wise from this job had to be ditched because the eyes were muddy, but the hair on the back of her head was tack sharp. I broke down and ordered a new lens as soon as I got home because of this. If I’m charging people their hard-earned money for a product, then it’s my responsibility to give them the best product I can make. I’ve been able to squeeze by with the shortcomings of the Tamron for a long time now, but this showed me once again that I can lose the best moment because of it, not because of my lack of ability. I’ll also steer clear of Tamron lenses from now on since their quality control is notoriously uneven and their warranty policy is proof of that. If I tried to sell this lens, I’d get next to nothing for it – it holds no resale value (especially since it’s technically broken). I have gotten by with it for a long time despite of it’s shortcomings, but I’ve known to shoot a lot of photos in case one is blurry or back-focused.

The last photo I shot of Christina was shot with a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 prime lens. I wanted a natural light, shallow DoF photo more for myself more than for the job, but to be honest, I bet she likes this one the best also. I just popped on the prime lens, opened it up as large as it will go and got in really close to her. Simple, quick, and an example of what a good lens is capable of – I only took two shots like this and that’s because the first one still had the white balance set to flash on the camera.

I’ll write up a post about my new lens when I finally get to do some work with it. I’m super excited because it’s a Nikkor lens, so I know it will rock!