A few weeks back a blast from-the-past schoolpal called Mel got in touch with me saying she was now a thespian and required some actorly headshots doing!
We hooked up for a brew at my fave cafe bar in the world – The Reliance – and chatted about school, life, choices, travel, values, work, family, dogs and art (and enjoy the main reason to be self employed, to enjoy booze before noon on a school day!). We put a date in the diary and met up a few days later in Roundhay Park with a bag stuffed with clothes. Traditionally, headshots are done in studios, under heavy lighting in front of a white background (like the headshots I did at NDP studios for Annabel Riley recently here), but apparently there’s just as much a call to do them outside in natural light now, which is my natural photographic habitat anyhoos.
I do always find it entertaining photographing actors, because they’re so much more aware of what they’re doing physically than the ‘normal’ people I photograph at weddings! Of course, being primarily a wedding photographer, I instinctively try to talk rubbish to make the subject laugh so I can capture a natural and fun response. But we were also aiming for a serious, competent, dedicated, reliable, warm, approachable, care-free, interesting personalities (as well as whatever other spectrum of emotion passed over Mel’s face). After all it’s these headshots that get an actor work, so they’ve got to be a blankly versatile canvas, yet with enough interest to captivate the eye…
So I basically stood there wielding a bag of primes, a reflector and a load of cheeky gags, with the hope that we’d eventually capture what we were hoping for…
And here are a few highlights…
Thanks for looking!