Headshots

The other week, a friend of mine asked if I’d shoot her headshots for her drama school application. Obviously, I said yes because (as everyone knows) I love taking photos – especially of people. I thought I’d show you how I created these in the limited space I had to work with!

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These are two of my favourites of the final shots. As you can see, we decided to go very simple – white background, smiling shots.

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Ibby was my test subject whilst testing out the lighting. I originally wanted to use natural light for this shoot as I liked the natural look it gave, but ended up using a flash instead.

Using a flash gave an even distribution of light over the model’s face and was much easier to control than natural light. I also thought it worked better for the ‘studio’ look we were going for.

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The background was also super simple (can you tell how easy things are my favourite?). I set up this background stand and pegged a sleeping bag liner to it (the bed sheet I usually use has mysteriously vanished, so a sleeping bag liner was the next best white thing). The most difficult part of this whole thing was ironing the background. Honestly, I’ve never seen such a creased piece of fabric in my life.

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I then placed an LED light behind the sheet to get an evenly lit background.

So there you have it! Easy-peasy headshots! Just shows what you can achieve with a very creased sleeping bag liner, pegs and a camera! And obviously a very lovely model or two!