Headshot Photography

Beauty Dish, Fill Card, and the Posing Logic Behind a Powerful Headshot
Video Tutorials

Beauty Dish, Fill Card, and the Posing Logic Behind a Powerful Headshot

Headshots are the shoot I get called for most often that I also see done worst most often. Not because photographers don’t understand light, but because they treat headshots like portraits. They’re not the same thing. A portrait can afford to be atmospheric. A headshot has one job: make this person look like the most commanding version of themselves. That requires a completely different posing vocabulary and a lighting setup precise enough to be repeatable.

Breaking Down a 4-Light Model Headshot Setup (And the Blue Gel Detail Most Photographers Miss)
Video Tutorials

Breaking Down a 4-Light Model Headshot Setup (And the Blue Gel Detail Most Photographers Miss)

Every few months I come across a tutorial that makes me pause and actually sketch something into my lighting journal. Most videos rehash the same three-light setups I could draw from memory. This one stopped me. Watch the full tutorial on YouTube before or after you read this, because the image of model Alex Kelly that opens it is worth studying on its own. In this Visual Education tutorial, photographer Carl walks through a headshot setup he shot live, in front of an audience, which immediately tells you something about how confident he is in this particular configuration.

Inside a Working Headshot Studio: What Shirin Tinati's South Bronx Space Teaches Us About Intentional Setup
Video Tutorials

Inside a Working Headshot Studio: What Shirin Tinati's South Bronx Space Teaches Us About Intentional Setup

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from shooting in a space that fights you. Wrong traffic flow between the lounge and the shooting area, nowhere to hang a backdrop without breaking down another light stand, clients sitting in a chair that faces a chaotic pile of gear instead of something that calms them down. I have shot in spaces like that, and the work always shows it, not dramatically, but in that subtle tension clients carry when they don’t feel settled.