Canton Headshot Photographer – Lisa S
Half of the headshots I make for clients are outdoors or environmental shots inside their workspaces. The other half involve studio lighting indoors and normally a white backdrop. But occasionally, I have a client who needs to update their headshot and match the headshots of their colleagues to create a cohesive appearance on the company website.
This was the case for Lisa. She sent me screenshots of her coworkers headshots, as well as a link to her company website. It was so helpful in understanding exactly what she needed.
Typically, I use three different lights to highlight my people and light the backdrop and I do it so much that I don’t even think about the setup. But this was much different for both using my grey paper backdrop and making sure it was much darker than what you see in person, as well as using only one light with a large softbox. Before I met Lisa to make her headshot, I set up everything with the backdrop, light, and settings and tested it out before our appointment. It went as expected in what I needed to do without any tweaks, which was good. And it ensured that there wouldn’t be any delays once we were together for me to need to fiddle with camera or lighting settings.
While Lisa has a career in child advocacy, she loves photography and creating photographs of people, birds, and nature. She mainly uses natural light, but also has a speedlight and is learning how to become more proficient in using it. As I set up my backdrop and light, we talked a lot about photography, lenses, lighting, and what we both like to shoot. I love finding that clients have common interests and our conversation made the time go by that much faster as I set up all my equipment. I believe it probably took more time to set up and tear down the studio set than it did for me to make the headshots, review them together on my laptop, and complete basic edits as she watched.
Most clients are interested in the technicalities, but Lisa was. And that was my jam in being able to talk through every part of the process and know she not only understood, but was interested in the hows and whys of it all. Including the editing settings I use to achieve the final image in Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop.
After I packed up all my equipment and was loading my car, Lisa was thanking me for making it so easy from start to finish. And I was thanking her for making it so enjoyable for me. Which has ultimately been my goal ever since I left corporate in 2012…when I go to work, I want to have fun. I want to enjoy what I do. I want to enjoy my clients. If I can achieve that level of enjoyment in doing what I do while knowing that I was able to make things easier for another human, I count it as a win.
I let Lisa know that I had further editing to do in Photoshop to clone out the softbox light, as well as the edge of the backdrop and the stand supporting it. Once that was completed, I’d send her the multiple files optimized and formatted for various only media platforms and all clearly named for each one. She seemed surprised at how quickly I had them emailed to her after I said goodbye. Which is cool. I don’t want to ever be the photographer that takes forever to deliver products. Same day delivery for headshots, and normally within an hour of parting ways, is the goal I strive for in delivering files. So they can be put to use stat.
Here’s a before/after gif.
