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Articles Tagged with: model

Portrait Vs. Headshot

There’s a fine line between a portrait and a headshot. The main difference being that a headshot is a professional representation of the subject for the desired use of the photograph, while a portrait tells more of a story. It doesn’t have to be a complicated story either, just something that makes you wonder what’s going on. Dramatic lighting, coloring, and expressive poses can take the same subject wearing the same outfit with the same hair and make-up and transform the image completely.

The photo above is of Amanda Cruz, who came by to get this headshot made for her new real estate business:

These shots are only a few moments apart – The difference in her pose and expression coupled with a change in the lighting setup and you have a completely different product. Sometimes the difference can be subtle, so the best way to determine whether you’re making a headshot or portrait is in the story. Is the photo showing the subject being themselves? Is it displaying something in their character? Then it’s most likely a headshot. On the other hand, if the shot is implying an emotion, or leading you to imagine a scenario that is playing out for or in view of the subject, then you’re most likely looking at a portrait.

Stephanie’s Comp Card Shoot

Stephanie contacted me recently to assemble a comp card for some upcoming competitions she’s participating in. The task at hand: Keep it real and keep it sexy. Um, easiest gig ever?

Up top is the front of the finished product, and above is the backside of the card. Below are some outtakes from the session.

I have no disillusion that anybody cares to read anything I write in this post, because, well… there’s these pictures to look at. So, in between each photo, I’ll just paste some lyrics from Paul Westerberg. Enjoy. Let’s start off with this gem: “I’ll give you my jacket if you give me your glamour/Gimme that racket, gimme that clamor.”

“Meet me any place or anywhere at any time now I don’t care/Meet me tonight/If you will dare, I will dare.” I Will Dare

“The ones who love us best are the ones we’ll lay to rest/And visit their graves on holidays at best/The ones who love us least are the ones we’ll die to please/If it’s any consolation, I don’t begin to understand them” Bastards of Young

“When we were young/We never played/Out in the street/We’d only run/where we felt safe” Meet Me Down The Alley

OK, I’ll stop posting lyrics here. I did want you to know that when you see the amount of effort and skill it takes for someone like Stephanie to look like this, it definitely changes your perspective. There’s natural beauty, but there’s also presentation. She’s an amazing stylist and make-up artist, she is on top of the fashion trends, and believe it or not, she’s a new mom. That’s right, these shots of her are after she recently had a baby. She’s been busting her ass at the gym and dieting to get into competition shape and I was very happy to be the photographer that she chose to capture her amazing work. Be sure to check out her progress and antics on her Instagram. You can see more of her work on her business website SwashbuckleAndRow.com.

Surreal Color Beach Portrait

I’ve been chasing down my muse lately in one way or another, from getting tattooed to collecting art prints and books, and basically scouring the web for inspiring images and creations (check out some of my findings on my pinterest feed). I don’t think we ever settle down as artists. Sure, we may hit peaks, and sure we hit rough spots where nobody connects with what we’re doing, but we always strive to keep growing either way. One of the worst things that can happen is that you get so bogged down with work that you forget to play. That can drain your soul quite quickly.

Don’t get me wrong, shooting anything is better than doing just about any other kind of work for me, but if I go too long capturing other people’s visions, dreams, and desires, I can start to feel the burn out demon creeping up on me. Every once in a while I need to reset my brain to fine tune that creative spark that got me into this mess in the first place. And with every step I climb up of this ladder, I get a better view of what I want to be doing with my photography and where I could take it.

That brings me to Ashley, who I met via an annual photography event here in Charleston put together by Modstudios. I was hesitant to participate for working reasons (and I did end up passing up a paying gig to do this on Saturday night), but I knew that it would be a no-pressure situation to try something a little different. And, by no pressure, I mean total timing pressure as I lost track of time with my wife at Holy City Tattooing Collective as she got this kick-ass Mehndi-style peacock tattoo by the awesome Margo. Time has a way of disappearing when watching a great artist work. As I rushed to Folly Beach afterwards, I ended up missing a shoot with another cool girl with tattoos (hopefully she understands, I’ll make it up to you Kelsie).

So, back to Ashley. This girl might have the brightest & bluest eyes in the world. Check this out, here’s Ashley with her natural hair color:

And then I pulled out the blue wig and flowers to match that awesome colorful dress:

She looked like she stepped out of a painting by Camilla d’Errico. Once the sun started to do it’s thing, we just made some magical images. A beautiful location, a beautiful model, and an onslaught of color to tie it all together. This is the direction my head is going right about now:

Michelle

I was approached by Dawn, who works with one of my clients, about her daughter Kayla who is showing an interest in photography. She wanted to see if Kayla could tag along for a photo shoot to see how things work beyond just clicking the shutter. I said that that would be cool, and it would be even cooler if we got Michelle (who also works for the same client) to be a model for us.

You can see why I chose Michelle, she’s pretty easy on the eyes as they say in the biz (or pretty much anywhere on the planet for that matter).As we were just going to be shooting different lighting scenarios, most of the shots we did were facial portraits.

We did some experimentation with gels and generally played around. She was a trooper!

And then I brought out one of the silly hats from the morning’s birthday party shoot 😉

She’d also make a pretty good country star with this look:

I also did some post processing in CameraBag 2. Nevercenter, the creaters of CameraBag, are running a sweepstakes with a pretty impressive prize, a brand new Canon 5D Mk III! You may recall that I’ve reviewed this software before. Here’s my entry into their sweepstakes:

So here’s a deal for you fine readers – the folks at Neversoft sent me some licenses for Camerabag 2 to give away to help promote the software and their sweepstakes! I’m going to give away 3 of them right here on this blog post. All you have to do is put a comment in this post (Make sure you use your real name and email address so I can send you the license key – don’t worry, your email will not be published anywhere). The first 3 comments get a copy of CameraBag 2 – That’s all there is to it!

Here’s another shot of Michelle using a similar filter as above:

One last shot of Michelle for you for now. I’ve got a bunch that I haven’t posted as well, but these are my favorites so far. I think she thought I was a bit insane when I asked here to do this last shot, but I absolutely love the look:

OK, so make with the comments people! I wanna give some stuff away 🙂

Haley (Part II)

Welcome to my second post of photos of Haley from her photo shoot. This time, it’s all about composites. This first one uses this picture of a road on a foggy morning in Landrum, SC.

The rest of these are a combination of multiple images found on Flickr as free backgrounds and textures, such as these from Flickr user Moosebite. There are a plethora of different types of images that are offered completely free for this purpose.

As for the art of making a composite, I used Photoshop and experimented with different blending modes, opacities, and manipulation of the images through Free Transform. I also used a combination of Snapseed and Color Efex Pro from Nik Software to finish these off.

The challenge for me is not to overdo it, as I did in this photo. It looks like the 80’s threw up on the 90’s and had a bastard child of a background, and poor Haley is stuck looking pretty in the midst of it all. But, it’s about experimenting for me, and I think the photos above work for their intended purposes.

In other news, I’ve got an exciting week ahead of me as I will be shooting some stuff at Charleston Fashion Week. It will be my first time shooting a runway show, so I’m pretty stoked! TTYL.

Kicking Ass With Krista

I met Krista soon after we moved to Charleston back in the mid oughts. She was working at the local gym as a personal trainer. She approached my wife and I and asked us if we want a free personal training session, to which we happily obliged. I can honestly say that in a fight, not only would she kick my ass, she’d run circles around me while doing it. But, beyond the fact that she’s built like a UFC fighter, she’s also a very beautiful woman.

I invited Krista over to the studio with the goal of demonstrating how dynamic she is. Together I think we swung for the fences and hit one out of the park. We started out doing some fashiony type poses.

Then she put on her workout clothes as I went for an edgier and athletic look to compliment her. She’s a pro at this, so all I really had to do was be there, but when working with any model it’s truly a partnership. You collaborate with the talent and they put their trust in you to capture them at the peak of their performance. In a situation like this where someone spends their life doing something and you’re in charge of conveying that to an audience, it’s important to understand how to use your craft to capture it effectively.

Even though she had a much busier task of watching five kids all by herself during the shoot, my wife Amy still was able to put her fingerprint on this shoot by suggesting that Krista bring her wedding dress. Only problem was, when Krista got married she was wearing the dress for two (she was pregnant, slowpoke). Ahh, the versatility of spring clamps to the rescue. Those things are only second to gaffers tape in importance in your photographer’s tool kit. With this look, I wanted drama, both in Krista’s look and with lighting.

Finally, we went total glam as I set up some speedlights behind her to get a ton of lens flare and backlighting. I totally think that experimenting and playing around after you get the shots you initially wanted to get leads to some of the best shots you’ll make. The model is loose, your photographer juices are flowing, and things just seem to click.

After that, I handed Krista the camera and asked her to make my new Facebook profile picture. She’s just getting into photography and has taken a few lessons, so I was more than happy to get her to turn the camera on me. I think she got it 😉

Haley (Part 1)

Over the weekend I setup the home studio and invited Haley over to be the first model in it. I’ve been exploring the different practices of people photography lately, and I have to say that this shoot was one of my favorites. It could just be the fact that Haley was an amazing model to work with, but I really had fun. She also had fun (it shows), and my ~~assistant~~ wife Amy had a lot of fun as well. In fact, Amy played a huge part in coming up with poses as well as keeping the energy up (we shot late into the evening). Here’s one of Amy’s pose ideas:

Haley is such a natural. Every shot felt like a keeper – in fact I haven’t even gone through all of them yet. I felt I needed to share these with you fine readers, hence the “Part 1” – there will be more of these soon!

So, here’s a behind-the-scenes shot of my home studio – You can see how I had the lights set up for this shoot. The giant softbox is an AB800 as the fill, the beauty dish is my 2nd AB800 as the main light, and there’s an SB-600 speedlight in the smaller softbox as a kicker in the back.

After getting some traditional poses, things started to loosen up and we got shots such as the guitar one up top. Each time she changed clothes, she brought a new energy. She also got to choose the music, which I provided via Pandora. I asked her who her favorite musical artists were and she was quick to respond with Florence + The Machine. If you’re looking for a good alt-rock Pandora channel, that one does the job!

I’ve also been reading and watching a lot of stuff from Peter Hurley about headshots lately since his guest blog post on Scott Kelby’s blog last week, and I find his style and approach really inspiring. I threw on my 50mm f/1.8 and since it was late and I couldn’t shoot with natural light, I used the modeling lights from the Alien Bees to get this:

I set the white balance to incandescent for that shot, but when I turned on the Nikon SB-600 in the kicker softbox, the flash color turned the background blue to get this effect:

In post, I decided to experiment a little on a couple of shots. Here’s a black & white:

And finally, here’s a composite I made with an image I shot at Tugaloo State Park last year. After combining the two, I used a cross-processing effect to get the color.

This was my first attempt a fashion style photography, and while I have a lot of learning ahead of me, I think Haley definitely made this look better than I expected!

More to come very soon…