We are surrounded by head shots everywhere we go at the moment thanks to the upcoming elections and the associated proliferation of posters. The standard varies, but it is certainly weighted towards “very poor” rather than “very high”. So when I was asked to do some head shots for an aspiring actress I knew what to avoid, and had a few ideas of what to aim for.
Leticia is hoping to develop an acting career and her agent told her she’d need a 10″ x 8″ black and white headshot to go with her CV. She is the girlfriend of runner Eoin Flynn, who’s photograph I took in the Great Ireland Run last month, and subsequently blogged. After that post I managed to track him down through his running club and sent him a link to the post. He was delighted to receive it and I followed it up with a print of the photograph for his collection. A couple of weeks later he got in touch to say that his girlfriend Leticia was looking to get some headshots done and would I be able to take them.
That sending a complimentary print to Eoin at minimal cost to me generated me some business is something that David Hobby wouldn’t be surprised about, and shows the importance and usefulness of referrals to the business of photography.
And so Leticia and I arranged for her to come to the studio where we would spend an hour and a half taking lots of photos and whittle down the final selection to one headshot that would hopefully make her stand out from the crowd when prospective directors were flipping through the many CVs that land on their desk.
Even though I shot this in a studio, I did so using my own flashes rather than bringing in studio lights. Two reasons – firstly, I know my flashes well and could adjust them quickly, and secondly, I could have a wire-free setup (using Elinchrom Skyports to trigger them) and so move the lights around quickly, and without fear of tripping up myself or Leticia.
We started with a single light setup – an SB-800 fired through a shoot-through umbrella at camera right – and the result was only ok. For a start, I needed to separate Leticia’s dark hair from the black backdrop I had chosen, so I added a second light – an SB-20 which I picked up second hand for EUR30 online – pointed at the backdrop, with a cardboard snoot on it to restrict the beam of light. This would add a nice halo around Leticia’s head, and create that separation that I needed.
I added an SB-600 through another umbrella as a fill light at camera left, and we did get some shots that looked nice, but were still lacking a bit of punch.
We wanted something that looked a little different and caught your eye, so I changed the lighting setup for something which I think has a more fashion feel to it. I think the correct term is beauty lighting, and when you tell your model this she’s likely to agree to try it!
I put the SB-800/umbrella setup in front of and above the subject, and put the SB-600/umbrella setup down on the ground in front of and below the subject. The upper light would be my main light, the lower light would fill the shadows, though in the end the ratio of light contributed from each is closer to 1:1. Instantly we knew that the look was what we were both after and we continued to shoot a whole lot of frames to try out different expressions and poses. One of the three prints I provided to Leticia in the end was actually the very first shot using that setup.
The photograph above has a fourth light – a hair light I guess – which gives a nice highlight on the camera-right side of Leticia’s head, and was created using one of the studio lights with a grid on it, placed behind and to the right of the subject. I used a studio light because I had run out of flashes.
The final image is, I hope, eye-catching, and while Leticia needed a black and white shot for her agent, I much prefer the colour version. Hopefully the next time you see Leticia will be on a stage or a big screen, and this photograph may help to get her there.
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