My parents retired from photography after 35 years in the business. They had a home studio in a small town; south of Florida of around 30, people. I actually tried everything not to do what my father did. So I tried out being a professional musician, had a construction business, founded an IT company, you name it I tried it…. I bought a Canon Digital Rebel on a Black Friday Sale and took pictures for fun and immediately liked it, I decided to go and work with my parents for a while at weekends in their studio in South Florida, which was a couple of hours drive each way.
I met my wife Julie at a bar down town, she loved photographing the music scene, so we shared common ground. After 6 months of dating we decided to open a studio together. We were very quick to learn and took that jump into photography, which paid off as we are about to celebrate 11 years of photography.
We soon found that our most successful area of photography for us, was the area we put the least amount of advertising into, so for us it was Headshots, we do a small amount of website, branding for businesses, we also capture images for executives, actors and more recently a lot of models. Sure it was scary to give up photographing weddings and portraits and the boutique end of our business but once we focused we became authentic. We found our niche and happy place. We work Monday to Friday, no evenings, our hours are 10am — 6pm.
It works for us and our family. We never used to be able to do that but now we can. The Business of Professional Headshots. Here's the thing that's going to sell the image. Oh by the way, guys, smiling picture, in your face. I do them, I promise. Speaking of which, the expression is the thing that sells the image. It doesn't matter how technically excellent the image is.
The truth is that your average person can't tell the difference between an image that's pretty good and an image that's excellent, most of the time, if they can't see past the fact that they don't like the way they look in it.
You understand what I mean? When you look at a picture of yourself that somebody else took, for me, the first thing that I do is, "Does my beard look good? But if it's from the wrong angle, and I look fat, I'm like, "I hate that picture, I never wanna look at that picture. And we're all kind of that way about ce If you're sensitive about, you think you have a weird smile when you drink three martinis, and then you see a picture of you after four martinis and you got a weird smile, you're expecting to see it, you see it, and you're not going to like it.
Expression is key. You can be a mediocre photographer, and if you can get great expressions from people, you're going to be successful in business, because people will like the way they look if they like their expression, more than they'll like the quality of the photo. I promise you that.
Anybody ever do children's portraiture, and the ones the parents pick are never the ones you pick? Because, they like them for different reasons.
They're not looking necessarily at technical excellence. Expression sells the image. Use a tripod when possible. I will tell you that when you can get your hands off the camera, and you can bring your face from behind the camera, so they can hear you and interact, you're going to be able to interact with your client more. So when I'm in the studio or when I'm on location, I'm shooting headshots, I'm using a tripod.
Now this is kind of crazy, because I know that a lot of people don't like to use them, but when your hands are free, you can engage more. When you don't have to direct the client, when you're very smushed up against the camera, you can talk to people. It's a little more open. So you can focus at the camera, I can have my finger on the trigger, and I can say, "Okay, man that looks great, that's awesome.
I would encourage you to try it. When I first started tripod shooting, it's really awkward, because you have to learn to work within the tripod's range of motion. But after a few sessions, you'll start to be, now I feel completely naked without it. If I go into a headshot session, and I don't have my tripod I don't even know what to do with myself.
Here's number one. That should have been number one. Stop looking at the stinking camera. I know we have, do your test shots and make sure your exposure is good, and then stop looking at the camera. And heres the important thing that you wanna remember about shooting for extraction, when you're shooting multiple people, and I'm gonna bring Shawnee in here and shoot her also, is that you cannot change the camera position and you cannot change the focal length per person.
You don't wanna change the perspective, you want them to look standing next to each other in fake life like they actually look in real life, okay? If you change the lens perspective, one person's gonna be bigger or smaller or wider or thinner or taller or shorter. So I cannot change the height or the distance.
In fact, do we have a bit of tape somewhere? Yeah, just somebody toss me, oh, I've got some gaff tape right here. Remember, I said that's one thing you always wanna have handy? I said that yesterday.
So take that tape, this is how cheap I am, I'll show you this. I take a little bit and when I need two pieces of gaff tape, I just rip it in half, long ways, and now I have two. Put this one foot forward and one foot forward there. Perfect, you have to mark that position.
So, no matter who comes in, don't move your light, don't move your camera. It has to stay, I mean, a little bit, if you bump into it you haven't ruined the whole thing. But you wanna even make a note of your focal length and if you didn't know, it'll tell you, I'm at about 85 right now. I'm between 70 and And so if I note that focal length, keep your settings the same, lock it in.
If you have a button, a lot of Nikon's have these and I know the 5D III has this, is that you can lock your aperture in so that it won't change. Because you change your aperture with this little thumb wheel and you can really screw yourself over.
Alright, perfect, ready. So let's keep that the same. Time to close. Good, two. So now I've given myself plenty of options. So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna bring in my next person. So Oscar, you're all set, thank you. Shawnee, come on up here. Are you ready to close? Yeah, shoot. So, if you're doing the group of lawyers and you've got 12 people coming in over the course of like let's say a month to get that shot, what is your system then to make sure that your camera stays the same, your tripod is at the same height?
Good question, I use a really high tech piece of software called paper and I write everything down on it. In reality, I do, I have a tape measure and I will literally measure the distance of everything from everything else and I will have that or take a picture of it or make an Evernote, whatever it is, however you need to remember that.
I will like, everything from the height of the light, the distance of the light from the subject, the distance of the reflector from that light.
Everything, the distance of the background to the subject, the distance of the camera position, the height of the camera position, all the camera settings and the focal length of the lens. In fact, if you wanna take one variable out of the equation, you could always shoot this with a fixed focal length lens like an 85 or a 50 and then you wouldn't have to worry about, you know what the focal length is gonna be.
That's one way to sort of eliminate that. They do that a lot, people who do school photos. They'll shoot a lot with fixed lenses like an 85 or a so they know that every kid's getting shot at the same focal length regardless of what school or what day they get photographed on. So there are certain things you can do to take some mystery out of it but I do, I literally write everything down in that case.
I don't have to do it a lot, most of the time I am shooting all the people in the same day but when I'm not, I do write everything down. Yeah, that's absolutely super critical, great question, great question. Okay, so we know that she's in the exact same place and everything, except for the camera that I just moved. Let's do a quick test. Cool, perfect. Let's see, I wanna wait until that one comes up. Cool, alright, is it possible to put please and side by side? And everything is exactly the same.
Save Class. Lessons Class Trailer Now Playing. Show All 32 Lessons. Class Description. As the child of photographer parents, it's ironic that Gary's career included everything but photographer until life led him back to the path he was ultimately destined. In he and his wife, Julie, founded Hughes Fioretti Photography. Reviews Savannah.
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