The Zen of a Perfect Business Headshot

Zen and the Perfect Business  Head Shot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part One:

We all remember some version of the old sixties quotation : “If you love something set it free, if it doesn’t come back blah blah, yadda, yadda” and, although it has been overdone just a wee bit these last forty years it is a small kernel of truth and believe it or not, applies directly to the Zen of getting The Perfect Business Head Shot.

How?

“If you love something…”

That would be, in most people’s case, a picture of themselves that, for years, decades sometimes, they have considered to be ‘their’ shot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They like their eyes, or their jaw, or the great background in this particular shot.

I know because they will often bring it in to show it to me.

They will tell me that this is the look they are trying to capture today and they will tell me off handedly what they like about ‘their’ shot but what they like the most, in my experience as a professional photographer, is the fact that in their perfect shot of their perfect jaw or eyes they are almost always substantially younger than they are when they arrive at my studio.

To get their new headshot, you know, the one that will replace their old, perfect headshot.

‘If you love something set it free…”

I’m talking about your youth, dear reader, you remember those great photogenic days of  carefree, unlined faces, eyes not yet reddened and creased, hair still all firmly in place (all of it) you remember don’t you?

Well in our quest to get to the very core of the Zen of the Perfect Business headshot, we must first face one uncomfortable, incontrovertible fact:

We don’t look like that anymore.

We still look good but we don’t look like that anymore.

Now before you click off in anger, before you rush to the bathroom for another layer of youth-a-nizing face cream consider this: no one wants to buy a home, or a car, or even a decent refrigerator from a kid.

Most of us in the business world are grownups and given a choice we prefer doing business with other grownups, right?

 

 

 

 

 

Be proud of those wrinkles. Let your weary face work for you. You are older and more experienced therefore you are smarter and better able to handle the complexities of business than some child…okay so the kid’s got pictures of herself on her cellphone that look like magazine covers (see below) and the last snapshot you saw of yourself reminded you eerily of your grandfather FEAR NOT! Over the course of these next few blog posts I will guide to the inner peace required to capture the Zen of the Perfect Business headshot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Either that or you can head over to Glamour shots and ask for the double soft focus filter, lots of backlight and maybe one of those cute little Zorro masks…

In our next installment: ‘Dress for Success’

My son makes me a better photographer

My son makes me a better photographer

(Or, ‘Family Portraits, oh the humanity’)

‘Kids in the Studio’ an innocuous enough phrase but, trust me, these are words that can make grown photographers shiver in their cargo pants, quake in their New Balance trail shoes, put the closed sign in the window and hide in a darkened dressing room till the kiddies have grown tired of smearing fingerprints on the front door glass and left.

Okay maybe a little bit of hype there but shooting kid portraits is not and never really has been for the faint of heart.

Doesn’t’ scare me though, and today I’d like to tell you why.

Here in my Nashville studio I am lucky enough to shoot with kids, not just my own, on a regular basis. It can be an ordeal, certainly. Nothing says “I don’t want to do this’ to a grumpy four year old like kicking over a light stand or (true story) trying to climb the wall BEHIND the seamless paper but, earlier hyperbole aside, most kids are happy to get their picture taken and a great many of them turn on the hambone jets within moments of coming in to the studio.

My son, John Robert, is a different story.

Slightly different, but different.

John Robert was born with the twin disabilities of Down syndrome and Autism. He is nine now, he doesn’t speak and he may never speak. He eats spinach right out of the can and vanilla pudding and mashed potatoes and not a whole lot else. He watches Barney DVD’s – cut with the occasional Spongebob or Dora the Explorer endlessly.

He is one of the world’s great huggers. He is a walking ball of love. He has no guile, no hidden agenda ever, no misdirection of any kind in his approach to life, he is incapable of it.

And what, pray tell, does this have to do with photography?

Over the years I have spent a fair amount of time in John Robert’s class and have had the opportunity to shoot, or sometimes try to shoot, a great many disabled children.

It’s hard.

It’s hard emotionally. My son is in the class with the kids in wheelchairs, the autistic screamers, the eye rollers, the droolers, my son is one of those kids.

It’s hard physically. Shooting a typical child will usually involve crouching or kneeling or sitting on the floor at different points but shooting a child with cerebral palsy, really getting down to the level of his wheelchair and staying there, trying to time the head swings and trying to figure out what sort of noise you can make to get him to really look at you, even if only for a tenth of a second, can take considerably longer.

And so I am a more patient photographer.

Getting the little girl who sits in the corner sucking on her hand and mumbling to herself to look up and truly show me her eyes takes intense concentration, once the camera is up to my eye it stays there, my entire being stays there because the glimpse she may or may not give me will be fleeting at best.

And so I am a more observant photographer.

Getting my son to stop climbing the ladder in my studio (a favorite pastime) or to stop throwing the reflectors around the room like Frisbees (another winner with him) and get up in front of the lights and then

stop

…and smile at me, really smile right into the lens is not really all that hard since John Robert knows that’s what daddy does and he’s actually been known to somewhat politely push a model off her mark so that the can stand in the lights for a few shots.

After all it’s his dad which kind of makes it his studio, at least that’s how he sees it.

But using the patience he and his classmates have taught me, and using the skills of observation he and the other disabled boys and girls in his world have helped me refine  can  often guarantee something better than just a quick snap of a fake, camera ready smile; they can often get me what I treasure most, whether I’m shooting either of my two kids or a friend’s children or a client I’ve just met:

They can get me a picture of who he really is.

From the Shooter’s view

Random musings on turning pro…

It’s a funny thing but over the last seven years of shooting pictures professionally I have noticed that the busier I get – and we are BUSY thankfully – the harder and harder it is to just get out in the world with a camera and shoot for the sake of shooting.

That’s what got me into this crazy business, the love of wandering the world looking for unusual people and places to photograph…the art of it if you will.

You’d think that after weeks at a time of fifteen hour days, in the studio or on location, portraits or architecture, advertising or personal, the last thing a photographer would want to do would be to take more pictures but let’s face it, we all start out in the business with little more than the love of shooting in our hearts and I’m happy to say I still have it.

I just don’t get the unfettered chance to use it as often, that’s all.

It’s something I think we all need to remember, regardless of our profession:

The world is a strange and beautiful place, there is art around us at every turn and it is our task, maybe even our gift. to stop and see it as often as we are able, without thought of money, or gain, just because it’s there and it adds to our lives when we take the time to notice it.

…and hello blogosphere – who knew just a few short years ago that a presence on the Internet would be more than just a good idea it would be required for anyone in the business world, even those of us in the small business world.

How small? Well for the first few years of my professional photography career it was just me. The last three or four years have seen the valued addition of my wife, Teri (better known locally as Jazz Piano & vocal master Teri Reid) as studio manager/booker/all around cheerleader and soup cooker. Her years a s a professional musician have given her tremendous people skills, something that clients comment on all the time. She is one of the few office managers in the world who can finalize a usage agreement for an advertising shoot, get our W-9′s to someone’s bookkeeper in Boise and chart the changes to All The things You Are in B-flat for a trumpet player who left his book at home all at the same time.

She makes a hell of a grilled cheese sandwich, too.

In addition to Teri the last year or so has seen the part time emergence in our studio  of Anne Young, sometime model, sometime limo driver, full time mom to four boys and all around great lady who does everything from filing to burning backup DVD’s to setting up lights and helping style wardrobe.

Back to the original premise of this, my first foray into blogging – who knew just a few short years ago that blogging and facebooking and tweeting and all the rest of it would become as much a part of our daily jobs as, in my case, taking pictures or editing?

Like it or not it is, and like it or not I’m here – I plan on using this space to bring world peace, end world hunger, and fix that whole  global warming thing…I’ll also speak to some of the more mundane issues of our time such as getting the perfect headshot, what being a model really means, how to handle the dreaded ‘family photographer’ at an event shoot and much more.

Stay tuned, this should be fun…?

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