5 Things Every Birthday Party Photographer Should Have
Joe Jenkins Photography
A Speedlight
Speedlights have been been around for just about forever and are a bit more safe to use than the flashguns of old ( potassium chlorate and magnesium were once used to illuminate subjects by way of a controlled explosion - which uh, probably wouldn’t pass today’s safety standards). Speedlights are standalone flash units connected to the top of the camera’s hot shoe (a hot shoe is simply the electrical connector at the top of your camera that powers the flash).
The primary use of a speedlight is to create light for the photographer. Depending on the situation and the crowd, the speedlight can either be pointed directly at the subject or up at the ceiling (in which case the light is bounced off the ceiling and onto it’s subject. The photographer can also point the speedlight at a wall (my personal favorite, when available) and have the light come from more up, over, and to the side.
Secondarily, however, the speedlight also can aid in autofocus and is extremely useful in this regard in low-light situations. Most cameras built these days do come with low-light autofocus illuminators, but they rely on mini-led lamps built into the camera that can be a bit distracting at parties.
The autofocus lamps on speedlights, however, use infrared lights to help with autofocus and, as well, are much more effective for cameras (as in, cameras have a much easier time focusing with the infrared lamps on speedlights than they do using the built in camera illuminators). Ask your party photographer if he/she primarily uses speed lights, environmental/ambient lighting, or a mixture of both.
A Tripod / Monopod
To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I brought a tripod to one of my birthday parties, but I do in the very least carry a monopod with me just about everywhere.
Birthday parties are places with very, very little lighting and carrying a monopod with you allows your photographer to take photos in low-light situations where the lighting is even, pleasing, but more scantly found.
A Good Set of Prime Lenses
I don’t go anywhere without at least one prime lens in my bag, and that particular lens is the Sigma ART 50MM 1.4. It focuses super fast, is intensely sharp, and in my opinion one of the best lenses ever made.
This lens is so good, and so useful, that when it started having difficulty connecting to my camera a few months back, and a few hours before an important shoot, I just went to the store and immediately bought another one (rather than go without it and wait for a repair).
This being said, the most common primes you’ll encounter for a birthday party is a 35mm, a 50mm, and every now and again I rock an 85mm prime (for one-person candids).
For those unfamiliar with what a prime is, exactly, it is a camera lens with only one focal length (as in it doesn’t zoom).
They’re important and useful for birthday parties for a couple of reasons. Birthday parties are generally in low light situations and prime lenses focus much faster than zooms (as they have less parts, for starters). Additionally, their apertures go as low as 1.4 and allow the lens to open up much wider and collect more light (zoom lenses, even professional ones, only open to 2.8).
A Full Frame Camera
The endless debate between full frames and cropped sensor cameras will forever be just that, endless. However, full frame cameras are objectively better and more well documented as such for low-light situations. Their usefulness and necessity for birthday parties is something I really cannot emphasize enough - as cropped sensors just aren’t capable of collecting as much light.
If you feel comfortable asking your potential party photographer if his/her camera is a full-frame, I’d recommend you do so.
Liability Insurance
This one is probably the most oft-overlooked requirement for photographers, but Certificates of Insurance (especially in New York) are fairly commonplace venue requirements, and whether or not a photographer has one can be used as a pretty good barometer for where they’re at in their career. Even if the event doesn’t require a COI, if a photographer isn’t able to obtain one, you have to ask how serious they are about their business.
I provide at least two COIs per week to various venues around the city and have a conversation with my insurance company every couple days to provide them (venues will oftentimes ask to have themselves listed as one of the certificate holders, in which case the insurance company will have to draft a different/unique one up). COIs generally affect event photography pricing as well
And that’s it. Above are the most five commonly used and requested items I use in my event photography. If you want to see more of my work, you can go ahead and do so by checking out my event photography.
5 Examples of Great Corporate Event Photography.
This helpful article documents five key things you should know about corporate event photography - as told by a full time event photographer. It is useful from both a client standpoint, as well as the photographer’s.
Marketing image taken at Docusign’s Momentum 2024. Taken with an on camera speed light and a Profoto B2 head / zoom reflector.
If you find yourself googling “What should I know as a corporate event photographer?” I can definitely help you out.
Corporate event photography is a fairly straightforward sub-discipline within the overall genre that is event photography.
Typically, businesses and corporations will hire photographers to capture everything from conferences, to keynotes, to fireside chats, to panels, and to client mixers (and much, much more).
And, while the reasons for hiring a corporate event photographer can be incredibly varied, that photographer is usually there for one purpose and one purpose only: marketing.
I’ve created this handy list that’s not only of benefit to you if you’re an event photographer, but also is of benefit if you’re a client.
Table of Contents
1. Event photograph with an External Light Source
Rim lighting at The Addis Tax Initiative meeting, over by the UN. Had it not been for this, the lighting would have been hum-drum overhead fluorescent and look nowhere near as impressive.
Lighting at a corporate event can be nothing short of a majestic affair. Stage lighting, bay windows flanking the venue, overhead skylights, and motorized spots designed to bedazzle the crowd all work in unison to unveil a new product and kick off an important keynote.
Most recently, I shot at The Glass House in New York City, capturing Docusign’s annual conference, Momentum ‘24. Reese Witherspoon joined CEO Allen Thygesen onstage to discuss the trajectory of the own insane success she experienced after forming her own production company and instantly creating hits like ‘Gone Girl.’
The images that I was able to create are nothing short of gorgeous and, while much of that had to do with a combination of my own and experience and the gear I was packing (I had a Z9, a 70-200, and a 14-24), the overwhelming majority of it came down to the venue I was shooting in. The Glass House is easily one of the most stunning venues in all of New York City, and it shows. The building itself is composed of massive bay windows overlooking the Hudson and a multimillion dollar soundstage. You can see from the photos attached that a large part of why the images I was able to create for Docusign were so amazing was because the venue itself was amazing.
Reese Witherspoon on stage with Allen Thygesen, The Glass House NYC for Momentum 2024
However, I’ve been to plenty of corporate event venues (especially at hotels) where the lighting is abysmal. In situations like this, not only is the lighting abysmal, but the stage lighting can be vastly inadequate and force you to shoot at some ungodly ISO, like 4000+, and wedge you into the creation of a bunch of poorly lit, grainy af images that no amount of explanation to the client will save you from.
Remember this, if you take one thing away from this article: You can be shooting in a post-war parking garage covered in rust, weeds, mildew, and gangrene, and the client will still blame you, no matter what, for the crappy images. If you’re shooting in a poorly lit venue, the client won’t accept that it’s poorly lit - only that you’re a poor photographer.
And, with this said, I’ve gotten into the habit of not only carrying a few speedlights around with me, but a couple strobes as well. I purchased the Profoto B2 kit some years ago and, when paired with a zoom reflector, works absolute wonders for stage lighting. It’s literally saved me more times than I can count. As well, if you place it on the opposite side of you, it provides an insanely pleasing rim light on the speaker that clients will lose their sh#t over.
2. Marketable images is all anyone ever wants out of this
This is an event photo but could be a campaign image, it’s so good. People smiling, good lighting, and the brand happily plugging away in the background. What’s better than this?
I once had a client hire me and his first question upon arrival at the venue was this:
“You aren’t going to send me a bunch of photos of like, water bottles and things are you?”
And I went ‘No? Why?’
And he responded, “well, the last photographer I hired ended up sending me a bunch of images of Aquafina water bottles with blurred backgrounds. I think he was trying to be artistic.”
30 photos of water bottles taken at various angles with a soft bokeh might look cool to a water bottle company. To all others, let’s focus on other things
I feel like much of professional photography and the people that inhabit it is a product of monkey-see-monkey-do. You ask people what their rates are and they pull some exorbitant number off the top of their head and if you ask them to explain that number their only reason is that it’s what their neighbor charges - god forbid that person come to that number off their experience or skill level.
The same can be said of event photography. Ask a guy why he’s sending a client artsy photos of pigs in a blanket from their company’s 50th anniversary party and he’ll likely respond that he once saw photos that were very similar in another photographer’s portfolio and just figured that’s what photographers do.!
Let’s be clear, here: The company you’re working for doesn’t really give a shit about how artistically you can render pigs in a blanket. It’s great that you can, and I guess it can be argued that cooked bologna wrapped up in cabbage plays an integral role to appropriately illustrating just how amazing a company’s 50th anniversary celebration was - but for the most part, those sorts of photos aren’t really going to be super critical to telling a story.
What is going to be critical to telling a story is, say, a toast. Or two people laughing hysterically at a shared joke. Or the event signage outside of a particularly interesting looking skyscraper.
All of those things will play a role in establishing a narrative of events that you’ll in turn use and your client, will in turn, love you for.
3. Setting up shots
I set this shot up and asked the woman to look happy and the simple act of asking her to do so made her, in fact, happy.
I’ve been living in New York City since 2008. When I arrived, which I find strange to say was well over a decade ago, I was a pretty timid person.
I hesitated to ask strangers for directions. I routinely went in the wrong direction on the subway and sat there silently stewing while convinced everyone on the train knew that I was an idiot.
Once, even, one of the most attractive girls asked if she could share a table with me at Starbucks. There we sat, myself and her and no one else, and I was so under spoken I couldn’t bring myself to even say hello.
Now, however, I clip shoulders while cannon-balling down the sidewalks of New York with the very best of them. I curse loudly at people I see littering in public. I sit shoulder to shoulder with people on the train and make no attempt to else up less mass if they aren’t doing the same.
This being said, I’ve gotten to be pretty good at being shameless while doing my event work and regularly set up ‘posed candids.’
You don’t have to be overbearing about it and start barking orders at people and saying things like ‘You! Stand over there and smile. Right now!’
This being said, if you see two people sitting together in a way / place that you think might make for a nice photo, but maybe they’re looking a little serious, walking over and saying something like ‘Excuse me, not to be a shameless douchebag, but if you were to like, say, smile while having this conversation, it’d make my life a million times easier.’
9/10 times people will be happy to oblige you, and oftentimes even asking them produces an authentic smile to begin with. People like helping one another, when they can, and it’s such an offbeat and unexpected question that since working this into my photography, I’ve never once had a refusal.
The client will completely love you for it, as well, because smiling candids are like, half of corporate event photography to begin with.
Two panel attendees chat in front of a window at the UN. Taken on a 50mm 1.4
4. Carrying two cameras around at all times is the norm
This being said, I carry two cameras around me at all times. I use a black rapid dual camera strap and, depending on the situation, will either have a 70-200 on one and a 24-70 on the other (this is usually my keynote configuration, though in the crowd is especially big and the venue especially large, I’ll often switch the 24-70 out with a 14-24.)
For smaller corporate functions, I’ll usually have a 24-70 on one cam and a 50 1.4 on the other. The reason for my 50 1.4 stationed on cam 2 is that I’ll shoot without a speedlight attached and use it for available light only. Even if the lighting in the venue is awful, there’ll usually be an opportunity to grab a handful of photos over by windows and near terraces.
Windows themselves produce super soft lighting and make for the most marketable and photogenic images you’ll likely take over the course of your event. If you’re in the corner of a building, or the room is small enough to the point where two windows with opposite sides of one another create ample light, getting a rim light behind the subject while at the same time having enough fill to evenly illuminate them will go a long way in producing marketable work.
5. Candids, Candids, Candids
What, exactly, is more marketable than this photo? Nothing is the answer.
Your corporate clients are going to have a shot list and on that shot list will be items like ‘keynote speech’ and ‘banners and signage’ and ‘stilt walker dressed up like a unicorn,’ and your job will be to get images of those three items. And you will. But, the vast majority of your imagery is going to revolve around candids and people having a good time interacting; or, looking super absorbed and engrossed with the stage presentations.
Think about it in a marketing material sense - what sort of imagery do you see on brochures and email blasts? Stilt walkers? Signage? Or people checking in at registration with a massive smile on their faces.
Focus on candids and specifically ones of people laughing and having a good time for the bulk of what content you create, and you really can’t go wrong.
3 Things You should Consider About Your Event Photographer That You Probably Haven’t Thought of
Does your photographer do anything other than event photography?
I used to argue that a person that only does any one specific thing within a field is going to be better at doing
that one specific thing than another person that spreads him or herself out across a number of them. I no longer
think this way.
Way back in the day, when I first got into photography, I told myself I was going to be just a headshot
photographer - as in I’d be like one of those fancy NYC actor headshot guys that charge $1500/session. Now, if you
told me that I’d have to spend the rest of my career doing headshots and nothing but headshots, I’d probably break
down and start sobbing.
Photography is a field with massive amounts of creative latitude, and restricting yourself to any one area of it
hobbles your creativity and stifles your self-expression. I’m a fairly prolific fashion photographer in the city
(www.josephpatrick.nyc) and I can honestly say that the three years I spent trying to forge a career out of the
brutal and cutthroat crucible that is that industry has transformed my event work into some of the best that New
York City has to offer.
If you’re hiring a true creative with a real vision, I can’t see why that person would limit themselves to just
one form of expression. It’s like hiring a chef that only makes one type of food (I’m a Michelin rated chef. I
make spaghetti. And only spaghetti. Make sense? No? Fine. )
Above is a photo I took for Docusign at their annual Momentum conference and without the experience I have in
fashion and portraiture, I never would have been able to create it - and that specific image could easily be used
in the highest levels of marketing campaign work.What sort of experience does your event photographer have with lighting?
Asking about what sort of experience an event photographer has with lighting
is a bit like asking what sort of experience a scuba diver has with water.
You’ve likely heard all your life e all photography is based on lighting
(this is true, but only mostly) and that as a result assume that because a
person has chosen to call themselves a professional at something that is
(mostly) all lighting, they must be masters at it.
This, however, is not the case, and I know (and have encountered) a large
number of photographers that are terrified at the idea of having the
lighting around them be manipulated by anything other than their surrounding
environment.
A really good photographer should be versatile enough to shoot in conditions
where the lighting is supplied either naturally or, if required, by them.
I’ve been a professional event photographer for 10+ years now in New York
City and work extensively with studio lighting, natural lighting, on-camera
flash, and a myriad of other sources. There are extremely few situations
I’d have no idea how to move forward in.
Where does he/she get their photography rate from?
To the uninitiated, a photographer’s hourly rate (in NYC no less) can be a
bit daunting; and so you ask yourself, how does one go about hiring an event photographer? Even when I got into the field and learned that an entry level
rate for an event photographer is $100/hr, I was shocked. I think I hit
refresh on my web browser a small handful of times to ensure what I
reading was accurate. This being said, my rate has since then grown to
$250-$300/hr, and for good reason.
For starters, I’ve been shooting for over a decade and have a lot of
experience. I’ve shot conferences, weddings, birthday parties, mitzvahs,
wedding-proposals, and everything in between.
Secondly, I’m aware of the ROI behind my work. From a corporate standpoint,
the images I create for companies are generally going to be seen by
tens of thousands (in certain case millions) of people. If one million
look at an image and it elevates their perception of your brand, that’s
nearly priceless.
This being said, if you asked my why I currently charge $250-$300/hr, I
can easily explain my answer and tell you that, as well, while people aren’t
breaking down my door this very second, I am in a reasonable level of
demand.
What you should stay away from, however, are photographers that base their
rates off of what other photographers are charging. I once saw a guy
advertising actor headshots on craigslist for $800 and his sample images
were fairly bad fashion photos of a guy dramatically taking off his shirt
while walking through a field. Photographers like this can’t explain their
rates in any other way than ‘well, that’s what everyone else is charging.’
$800 to them for a headshot session seems like magic money and they’ve no
idea of the work and sweat that goes into it and the years of dedication to
the craft and the trade that you’ve placed into your work. They’ve no
no respect for the profession and their primary motivation is a quick buck.
0/10 - would not recommend.
Docusign Momentum ‘24, feat. Reese Witherspoon
I had the ultra distinct pleasure to be hired by Docusign to photograph their annual conference, Momentum. 2024 was an extremely important year for the company, as they announced a new logo, a company rebrand, and as well, the exciting new direction they’re going in. The fact that they hired me to be responsible for the visual narrative of an occasion with such an extraordinary level of importance was very humbling - moreover when coming from a company as innovative and beloved as them.
Reese Witherspoon joined CEO Allan C. Thygesen on stage for a fireside chat on the company, business, and Reese’s accomplishments outside of acting. Below is a brief summary of the day’s events with much, much more to come.
As always, see more of my event photography at the link below:
Collab with Redfin
I was recently contacted by Redfin.com and had the opportunity to work with them on best spots in NYC to photograph. You can check it out at the following link, and it was such a pleasure to work with such a pleasant and talented group of individuals. They were interested primarily in my event photography work, and you yourself can find that area of my portfolio at the below URL. If you’ve any other questions, feel free to reach out via the contact page.
Birthday Party Photographers in New York City - A guide to Hiring and Pricing
Joe Jenkins Photography 2014
Table of Contents
Introduction
In New York City, birthday parties are a big thing. I know this because I’ve attended (either socially or professionally) dozens. Upon Dozens. Upon Dozens.
What can I say, New York City has a thing for parties. Just as there’s something in the water that makes Brooklyn’s pizza dough the finest in the world, there’s something in the water in Manhattan and it’s surrounding boroughs that makes people want to don a pointy hat and walk around in cocktail attire.
As per the New York Post, the average American spends $1,422.65 hosting and planning for parties yearly ( they spread these figures out between seven parties thrown annually, and not on any one singular event). What this means is that the average American spends $1,422.65, spread out amongst several different parties. I can tell you from experience that the average party-throwing New Yorker that has chosen to host their event outside of their apartment and at a venue will have usually exceeded this figure in one evening alone (storefront.com estimates the average venue rental in NYC to be $3500).
And so, this being said, when investing this kind of money in an event that you hope to be the grandest of the year, and surely grander than your neighbors, how do you hire a party photographer that’s going to properly capture it? What is that person going to cost? And what should you look for when hiring him or her?
Let’s take a look at a few things to consider.
Price
How much does a Birthday Party Photographer Cost in New York City?
Entry Level:
The cost of a birthday party photographer in New York City starts at $100/hr. It was $100/hr when I began shooting events 10 years ago, and it is $100/hr now. It’s always been this rate and, for years to come, likely will continue to be. Why this number is so apparently sticky with is beyond me, but that’s what you should expect to pay someone that fills out the word ‘Photographer’ in demographic questionnaires and has some far-flung aspiration to one day be culturally influential.
For people that moonlight as photographers (ie have a 9-5 but own a reasonably decent camera and have an interest in photography), you should expect to pay between $50-$100/hr.
One major factor to consider is this: ‘How does this person set their cost?’
Photography is full of people that do the ‘monkey see monkey do’ thing and set their prices simply because that’s what they see another photographer is charging - and to be honest I don’t think those people really have a genuine understanding of what goes into the occupation or even really take it seriously. If you’re charging $250/hr-$350/hr as a photographer, it should be because you have at least either a half-decade to a decade of experience under your belt, or it should be because you’re just that naturally talented. If you’re charging $250/hr as a photographer simply because it seems like magic money and because you see other people charging that, it shows you not only have a lack of respect for the profession but as well as that a lack of understanding of it.
My advice is to take a hard look at someone’s portfolio. If they’re charging a premium rate and you see some semblance of quality and experience, you’re good. If not, stay away. If they claim to have a decade of experience, ask them for photos from 2013. You’re about to pay that person more money per hour than most Americans make in a day - they shouldn’t mind. I wouldn’t.
Intermediate to Advanced:
Joe Jenkins Photography 2016
Intermediate-Advanced Party Photographers
A good, intermediate-level birthday party photographer cost in New York City should be anywhere from $100-$175/hr. And hiring at these rates you can expect to comfortably get good services. For advanced and on you can easily spend $200/hr-$350/hr but once you hit those costs, my advice to you would be to, once again, really ask yourself where that person is getting their pricing from. If you look over their portfolio, does it reflect a level of experience to command a rate like this?
$200/hr is objectively a very respectable rate and, as a result, should be quoted at by photographers that have built up the experience and the equipment to command it.
To Sum Up Your Birthday Party Photographer Costs:
Beginner/Entry-Level $100/hr
Intermediate-Advanced: $100-$250/hr
Advanced: $250/hr and up
Joe Jenkins Photography - 2014
Type
The Freelance Birthday Party Photographer:
A birthday party photographer of this type is where you’re going to get the absolute best quality and most value for your money. I don’t say this because I myself am a freelance photographer ( I’m not going to claim that there isn’t at least some bias, though ) but because, really, it’s common sense.
Photographers are people that are mostly self employed. Who becomes self employed to work for someone else, be it a production company, a staffing agency, or a tech company? I’ve no desire to give someone 50% of my earnings, whether it be an app or a production house.
This being said, when hiring a freelancer, you can be confident that for every cent you spend, you’re getting one cent back of photographic value in return.
The Birthday Party Photographer You Hire Through a Photography Company
If you’re hiring a photographer through a company (say, gruberphotographers), for instance, this is where you’ll tend to find the best photographers available that are willing to operate under someone else. Many of them are nearly fully freelance themselves and just need a little bit of an extra oomph per month to sustain themselves, and as well companies like gruber typically have more hiring requirements and higher standards than what you’d find on a hiring app.
When you hire a photographer through a photography company, you’re getting about 80 cents on the dollar of photography, and 20 cents on the dollar of company upkeep.
Snappr Photographers
Snappr is a service that started a few years ago that billed outself out as ‘the uber for photography,’ back when everyone was billing themselves as the uber of something.
Initially, the rates they offered for a birthday party photographer were beyond low but, after recent review, seem to have since gone up a little bit (apparently they couldn’t keep quality photographers willing to work for 80% below the industry standard. Who knew)..
As of this writing, they’re offering a three hour party photographer party package for $389. Given that Snappr.com takes half of the fee, that means that, while you’re spending a little over $125/hr on a photographer, what you’re getting in return is a $60ish/hr party photographer. The other $60ish goes to snappr.
As well, you don’t really get much of a selection to choose from, and they usually just pair you with whoever’s available.
This being said, if you want to hire a $60/hr photographer that you’re going to pay $125/hr for, be my guest, but I’d say its a bit of a waste of money, since $60/hr photographers are usually moonlighters and pre-entry-level.
I as well really don’t feel like they have a tremendous amount of respect for the very photographers they employ, as well, as I once viewed an advertisement they were running that started with a good looking young actor, hired to play a photographer, exclaiming into the camera
“Hi. I’m a photographer. When I’m not taking photos, I’m just sitting around, wishing I was taking photos.’
How they don’t see that as beyond insulting to hard-working photographers everywhere is beyond me, but I wish them luck.
Thumbtack Photographers
I used to be on Thumbtack and got quite a bit of business from it, prior to being able to branch off on my own. Their business model matches photographers with clients and many of the photographers on it aren’t all that bad. Thumbtack’s cost for leads though is extremely steep, and so this sort of service is once again mostly inhabited by party photographers that are not quite there in terms of being able to exist on their own.
One thing I will say is that they’ve an incredibly smart closed system of making the consumer feel like they’ve shopped around. For instance, if you go to thumbtack, and it provides you with five photographers to choose and compare from, and you hire one of them as your birthday party photographer, you’ll oftentimes feel like you’ve done just the right amount of shopping around - when in reality all you’ve done is just hired from an extremely limited pool of photographers living within an expensive closed system.
Hiring an Event Photographer in NYC
Meatpacking District for Pandora Jewelry - Joe Jenkins Photography 2018
How do people hire photographers in NYC?
This sounds like a silly question, but is a serious one. How does the average consumer find an event photographer to work their private function?
I ask this as I feel said average consumer is hesitant to reach out to a freelance photographer (or freelancer in general) and inquire manually about services - ie emailing/calling. We live in an age and an era where each and every industry available has a company/start-up (such as thumbtack, or gigsalad, or god-forbid snappr) that introduces people and vendors to one another (for a fee, of course). As a result the vast majority of service-oriented purchasing decisions that, once relegated to phone calls and emails, now occur via a button-click. A person signs up to a site, is presented with a list of freelancers, and makes a decision via that channel. The site that makes the introductions as well provides the consumer with a level of safety, as the site will tend to be a large brand and offers the illusion of a safe endorsement.
“Hey, we’re a billion dollar company. We endorse this guy. Feel safe” is the message.
Additionally, even though the consumer has technically gone to just one site or service, they as well feel they’ve done their due diligence in making their purchase.
Say, for instance, someone puts out a quote request on Thumbtack. Thumbtack looks at the vendors it has in its database capable of fulfilling that consumers request, and then presents them on a webpage or in an app. If there are five of those vendors, and the consumer chooses one, he/she will simultaneously feel they’ve also weighed a number of choices and purchased responsibly (despite, once again, that all of those choices came from a single source).
The Best Photographers are not on App Services
The irony of this method for hiring someone of course is that the people that inhabit these sites tend to be not as capable as the ones that are able to acquire business using the traditional methods. You have to ask yourself, if this person cannot acquire business/survive for him or herself without having to have a startup get it for him/her and for either a massive fee or by forcing them to work at an absurdly low rate, how good can this person then be?
Party at the Skylark - Joe Jenkins Photography 2016
Thumbtack, for instance, is a site that I used to use prior to them charging outrageous amounts of money for their services (their pricing very literally went up 500%+ in certain genres of my field) . My relationship with them came to an end when they attempted to charge me $82 in order to connect with one person. As in, someone was shopping for a photographer, went on thumbtack, was led along their hiring path into clicking ‘interested’ on my profile, and then charging me close to $100. For one person.
That’s insane
Snappr, on the other hand, in my opinion essentially takes freelancers that cannot survive on their own and places them in a directory and then forces them to work at rates that are around 60-70% lower than the industry standard.
I’m not about to ask the following question because I’m salty over them or anything. I just want you to generally ask yourself why would a person be on a site like this in the first place.
Do you think people want to work with the above companies? If my rate was, say, $200/hr as a photographer, would it be my dream to only be able to get business through a company that forces me to sell my services at a massive discount because they want to provide to the consumer something as cheaply as humanly possible.
Of course it wouldn’t, and that’s why you won’t find the top talent on any of the hiring sites such as this.
Email is Sort of Dead, Maybe?
I ask this as I look at my web traffic and see a retinue of visitors, many of which will view multiple pages on their visit (my main portfolio, and then my event portfolio, and then my about portfolio, and then my contact page) but then eventually exit prior to any sort of contact being made.
I’ve always found this somewhat strange, as my view to contact rate when I was on sites like the aforementioned was always extremely high, and I can’t help but wonder if things have shifted in such a way where the consumer has become unable to have a conversation with a freelancer that resides outside the boundaries of an upstart tech company looking to wedge a service fee in between vendors and consumers.
I’ll continue to change my pages and how people interact with them and see what happens. In the meantime, feel free to drop me a line.
I do find that people looking for corporate event photography tend to be a little more versed in actively reaching out to freelancers via email and either requesting quotes or simply making a basic inquiry about services. Granted, it’s their job to do so and, and in many ways finding the right photographer isn’t an option so much as a requirement (whereas hiring one for, say, your birthday party is).
This being said, however, I do feel that the private, consumer market is a little more ‘quote averse,’ in that if given the opportunity, people would rather have their options presented or pushed to them, like freelancers in a shopping cart, prior to making their purchasing decision.
Real Estate Headshots - Five things you should know
Your Real Estate Agent Headshot - 10 Things You Should Know
The Common Thread
You’re walking down the street on a cool Monday morning. You’re sort of but-not-really late for work and, with this in mind, your pace is somewhat brisk; but not so fast as to show up a bunch of power-walkers at the mall and make enemies out of an incensed group of old ladies in sweatsuits. Dogs bark and sprinklers make their fitz-fitz-fitz sound as you round the corner. look up, and see it. It’s not a largely impactful point of your day but nevertheless it’s there for your mind to instantaneously observe and assess. It’s the omnipresent and ever ubiquitous realtor signage.
It’s attached to a brownstone, or shellacked to a wall, or affixed to a gate. It’s a rectangle or a square or if the weather’s been unforgiving maybe a rhombus. It’s black and white or contains more colors than there are names for them.
It comes in a myriad of designs and variations and has been re-sketched, retooled, reshaped, and reworded since realtors were selling real estate. Despite all this, each and every one of them has one unmistakable and unshakeable trait in common. One common thread brings each and every piece of marketing asset together, whether it be a stack of brochures in a lobby in Philadelphia or the signage of a brownstone in Manhattan. That thread is, of course, the realtors headshot.
Moving Forward
So you’ve decided to have a professional headshot taken for your real estate business. This is a good, no, fantastic decision. The reason why this is a fantastic decision is for two reasons.
Your Headshot is Your Brand
The first reason is that your headshot ultimately is the end-all ambassador for the brand that is you. Companies like Nike, Apple, Adidas, and Prada all have an incredibly diverse marketing portfolio and have to worry about hundreds, if not thousands, of things at any one given moment that define their brand. Not only do they have to worry about each and every product in their inventory being out in the world and altering people's perceptions of their brand (or hopefully in the very least preserving it), they have to allocate mental resources and company processing power into each and every marketing asset that’s out there doing the same. And, when I say marketing asset, I’m not just referring to the multi-million dollar times-square billboard placement that’ll run through March. I’m referring to everything; whether it be the aforementioned billboard or a vertical side banner on an ecom side. There are so many points of interest in the matter that it’s mind-boggling, and I wouldn’t want to be any sort of entity that has to worry about that many things at once shaping how people view me as an entity.
Luckily you, as a realtor, don’t. Your main product is yourself (we’re speaking irrespective for now of your properties) and there are no variations on this. For this reason, you only have a few marketing assets to worry about and can devote your resources into other things. Nevertheless, one of these assets is of penultimate importance because, as a photo of you, and with the main product being you, your headshot is the marketing asset that most encapsulates your brand. Your headshot, in effect, is your brand.
First Impressions Are Everything
When someone walks by your listing, or sees your card, or observes any piece of signage advertising your services, they make an immediate and all encompassing first impression that instantly and irreversibly defines how they think of you.
A study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science and cited on psypost.org (https://www.psypost.org/2017/10/study-reveals-just-quickly-form-first-impression-50039) found that glancing at a person’s face for 33 to 100ms was sufficient time to form a first impression. That’s thirty-three milliseconds, or thirty-three thousands of a second. To put that into perspective, a humming-bird beats it’s wings once every 66 milliseconds. This means, of course, that people are cementing their perception of you and your brand at half the time it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings.
While that’s insane, it’s also important; as thirty-three ms is about the time it takes for someone to look up from their morning coffee and see your face on a real-estate sign as they’re sitting at an intersection.
Getting a Good Headshot from a Headshot Photographer
Now that we’ve discussed why you need a good headshot, we can go ahead and move into how you should get a good headshot. I feel like articles are always lacking in one area or another. They’ll tell you why you need to do something but not how you need to do something. Or, conversely, they’ll give you the how but not the why. Today we’ll do both.
Firstly, you should really be hiring a photographer that specializes in portraiture and narrows that focus even further into headshots. While a diverse skill set in photography makes a photographer more able to do a wider spectrum of things, there really are specific aspects to portraiture that someone with less experience isn’t going to know. It takes a very, very long time to learn not just indoor lighting but outdoors as well; and with neither you nor the photographer having really any control over the latter, it’s best you hire someone that knows what he or she is doing. Again, this photo not just represents your brand but is it when you’re not present, and with outdoor headshots especially being so popular amongst real estate agents, it’s better to have someone that can take control of the situation and knows what to do with your surroundings.
While I’m not necessarily trying to plug myself, I’m certainly not going to link to some other photographer's portfolio for examples. I’d be that guy that walks into a voting booth and doesn’t select himself.
Below are various examples of corporate, real-estate, and commercial headshots for you to get an overview.
https://www.joejenkinsphoto.com/corporate-headshots-nyc/
I don’t think it’s especially important that you hire someone that claims to specialize in real-estate headshots. There absolutely are some aspects to realtor headshots that do require some knowledge (vertical or horizontal placement and how either will fit in with your ad/current marketing trends and how present-day headshots look for example), but for a photographer to claim he/she specializes in realtor headshots sounds more like a sales pitch than a legitimate claim.
In summary:
DO: Hire a headshot photographer. Preferably one with real estate experience.
DON’T: Hire a headshot photographer that claims it’s their undying trade specialty (seriously, who literally only does real estate headshots as their sole occupation and form of income?)
Hire an Experienced Photographer Because They’ll Direct You. Newer Ones Won’t
Anymore, when I get on set, I immediately start setting things up, issuing directions, and answering questions. When I first started out, that wasn’t the case. I was tentative in all of my actions and not confident in orchestrating their outcomes. My photos were never bad (maybe once or twice they were so-so), but I danced around their setups with the steps of someone that generally knows what they’re doing but still has to somewhat hope for a good outcome. Now before taking a photo I to a high degree know exactly how it’s going to turn out and exactly what it’s going to look like.
This being said, people want to be directed. In my event and conference photography (www.joejenkinsphoto.com/event-photographer-nyc), group shots are inevitable. People begin arranging themselves in shapes and formations from past group photos. Usually they achieve a moderate degree of success before invariably requesting I tell them what to do and where to go - typically commanding ‘Joe! Direct us!’ in a somewhat frustrated vein. It’s become so consistent anymore I don’t wait for it but just immediately begin issuing commands and telling people where to go (which is occasionally fun when done for people that aren’t used to taking orders).
The same is true of your headshots. You want a photographer that’s going to show up and know exactly what to do, how to pose you, and where to place you. It is unequivocally not your job to know what’s going to make for the best backdrop (though you can suggest), how to position your arms, or what sort of expression to make. While you can certainly offer your input on the matter, at the end of the day it’s the photographer’s job to both know and execute this.
Choose a backdrop that fits your real estate, not someone else’s
This one is fairly straightforward, but I’m constantly seeing people off the mark here. High end commercial real estate typically yields headshots that are taken either in-studio and on a seamless backdrop or indoors; in a setting that evokes a corporate feel. It fits into an overall aesthetic adherent to the industry and for this reason, you’ll see a number of agents that sell commercial properties on white seamless.
Headshots for residential properties, on the other hand, are typically taken outdoors and involving a property of some sort. In Manhattan and Brooklyn, for instance, there are a wealth of brownstones for sale at any one given time. As a result, many a realtor headshot is taken in front of one as it both effectively conveys a residential atmosphere and as well illustrates what they sell.
Don’t choose your headshot based exclusively around what someone else is doing. Find what works for you and what will best illustrate what you’re selling.
Don’t Smile Like A Maniac in Your Headshot But Don’t Not-Smile Like a Sociopath
One thing I’ve learned about taking headshots (and I’ve taken a lot of headshots) is that maintaining a blank, neutral expression is either a practiced thing or something that simply comes naturally to a very small percentage of the population. Those magazine covers you see of Leonardo Dicaprio or Barack Obama, where they’re maintaining expressively blank and commanding expressions; those are tough. Extremely tough. Excruciatingly tough. Do you have any idea how hard is it to look expressive with no expression? Most of us that live within the plane known as reality just look like grim-faced sociopaths in photos where we don’t smile.
For this reason, you should definitely smile in your headshot. You’re operating within a commercial space anyway and so you want to look as friendly as possible. Don’t overdo it and look like you’re at a club, on drugs, but definitely convey an approachability and social-sense that’ll make people look at your photo and be like ‘I’d buy a commercial loft from that guy.’ Or ‘I’d get a bank to help me purchase a four bedroom house from that girl.’
Again, you want to look friendly, approachable, and helpful. Don’t go nuts and overdo it as you do want to simultaneously look like an authority on the matter, but a smile goes a long way.
A Makeup Artist is Really, Really Good at Makeup
Men don’t have so much to worry about this issue (unless you’re somewhat shiny a large percentage of the time), but makeup artists absolutely do make a difference. They’re better at blending tones, applying the right amount of eye shadow, and on the whole achieving a level of polish that the average person simply isn’t capable of.
I’m not knocking your makeup application abilities, but this is something this person does for a living. Their lives revolve around it and as a result, they’re going to have an exponentially higher degree of proficiency on the matter than you do.
I’ve tied my shoelaces every day for the entirety of my life and am, if questioned, probably pretty proficient on the subject. If I met someone that did it professionally though, for a living, tallying eight+ hours a day on the subject; well I’d probably see all sorts of loops and knots I never knew existed
Do you think any of the models in the ads you look at do their own makeup? They absolutely do not. Because it’s an ad. Used to sell something. And your headshot is an ad. Used to sell you.
Afterwards you can go to a happy hour, sit there, and shimmer.
Clothing
This one’s fairly easy (though maybe you don’t feel that way). If you’re wondering how to dress for your headshot session, simply put on what you’d to a showing. I should say that if you wear a lot of patterns and stripes, avoid doing so on your headshot day, as they can divert attention away from the central point of the image (you).
Outside of dressing like you would for a showing simply because I’d imagine you’ll be looking your best, you’ll as well be conveying authenticity. When you walk into a room and greet your viewers, they won’t be surprised by the person and complain later on they’ve been catfished by a real-estate agent.
If you’re looking for a more objective take on the matter and appreciate things broken down in a more scientific sense, feel free to head on over to: https://www.helpscout.com/blog/psychology-of-color/
They’ve written a nice article on how color fits in with marketing and how various tones/shades/hues elicit different emotions.
Your License and Copyright
The world is populated by a group of very laid back and easy to work with photographers (like myself) and a group of not-so-easy or at all-laid back photographers. The latter group can be a bit more difficult to work with and will do things like itemize the shoot and the proofs as two separate costs (as in some photographers will charge you $x for the shoot itself and then $y for the actual images afterward; which is ridiculous but whatever) and act as if outfit changes warrant massive alterations to the cost structure (they’re called looks. It’s a thing).
People such as this generally remain more cognizant of the fact that all of us, as photographers, maintain copyrights on the images we take. What this means is that despite being an image of you, I as the photographer hold the copyright. The reason this can be problematic is because in any future marketing materials you purchase, I (or anyone) could technically cite violations of those copyrights and seek compensation; punitively if I want to.
I, of course, would never in a million years actually do that; though there are those that would and do.
This being said, make sure you either own the copyright or have no restrictions on how the images are licensed for marketing materials. This doesn’t necessarily mean you demand a contract, as a simple confirmation via email will do do (make sure you keep the email, of course).
Your Headshot’s Use Case
I once did a round of headshots for a fintech company. There were around eight employees and, after taking the first shot, the marketing director and person responsible for coordinating the shoot came over and mentioned that the headshots were going to be framed in circular buttons on the bio site. This was mentioned, for the first-time, midway through the shoot and within a space of thirty seconds. Because of this, I gave it a bit of thought but, being in the middle of the shoot, didn’t allot it a huge amount of attention.
I continued along with the shoot as I normally would, submitted the contact sheet a few days later, and all was well within the world until I got an email from the marketing coordinator stating that only a small percentage of the photos were usable and that each staff’s favorite would not work with their specific formatting requirements. The headshots were no different from any I’d taken in the past (and the reason I was there to begin with was because of the headshots I’d taken for the company founder, two years prior), but because of the very strict use case requirements they had, they were initially under the impression that nothing I’d produced they could use.
Though it took about twelve hours of additional work to correct, all was remedied, said headshots are now up on the company site, and everyone will resume sending one another cards on the holidays.
The reason I felt this story was pertinent is because you absolutely need to think not only about how your headshots are going to be used, but how many different uses there are, and any pre-existing designs it will fit into. Don’t go into the shoot thinking every headshot is absolutely the same and that the images the photographer produces will fit neatly into the slot that is your design; it may not. A business card has different dimensions than a billboard and a billboard has different dimensions than a flier.
Discuss the formatting beforehand with the photographer and ensure that your headshots are going to work for your intended uses. To be safe, you can take shots that are both vertically (portrait mode) and horizontally (landscape) oriented.
A Full, Unedited Contact Sheet Sucks
As a photographer in New York City, one of the most photo-heavy markets in the world, I pass shoots daily. Not only do I pass by shoots at a daily rate but I get very judgy over how they’re being conducted (I can’t help it). I’ve been shooting for long enough that I can typically get a sense of what the image is going to look like based around what the photographer’s doing and what sort of set-up they’re working with.
Not too long ago I saw graduation shots being taken in the West Village. The photographer may as well have had her camera on burst fire mode as she was shooting at about 3-5 frames per second. I inwardly cringed as taking 3-5 frames per second of something that isn’t essentially moving (a person’s face, for instance) is typically a bad idea. It’s a bad idea because it creates a massive amount of not just extra work, but extra work of an unbearably tedious nature. A camera’s burst fire mode is typically for journalists taking photos of people as they move; not for stationary subjects that are sitting there looking the same from one moment to the next.
Going through five hundred photos that all look for the most part the same is, to be clear, excruciating. Outside of the fact that it’s incredibly time-consuming and fairly boring, there’s a lot of choice paralysis involved and not a recommended method for how to spend an afternoon; moreover when you’re looking at yourself. You may claim that you’ll go into your session with a variety of poses and expressions, but unless you’re experienced and comfortable on camera (which most people aren’t), there’s likely only going to be three or four end poses that will be distinctly different from one another.
For this reason, I’d recommend you think about whether or not you want the photographer to narrow down the initial set to the obvious choices and as well weed out duplicates. It will make your life intensely easier in the long-run.
Just Because Someone Else has a Headshot Doesn’t Mean it’s Good
People have a tendency to do what other people do; oftentimes regardless of whether it works or not. Not only do they have this tendency, but once it’s slipped into the group consciousness, it’s pursued rather tenaciously. If you need evidence of this (which you probably don’t since it’s fairly well-known, but for argument’s sake we’ll say you do) you really don’t need to go any further than a dating app like Tinder.
If you’ve never used Tinder, it’s one of the most proliferate trend-producers I’ve ever before witnessed. A couple years ago, I noticed a profile that cited each state the girl had lived in prior to the one she currently resided in. It looked a bit like this:
OH => PA => TX => CA => NY
A couple months later I began noticing these breadcrumb trails in more and more profiles until eventually it was a trend so prevailing it seemingly populated thirty-percent of profiles. Every other profile I visited had this large chain of states the person had lived in prior to ending up in New York. What was the reasoning behind this?
Those people had simply come across other people employing the same social-schematic.
If anybody actually sat down and thought about it, does a string of states you’ve resided in really make you more compatible with someone? Is a girl going to visit some guy’s profile and go ‘omg this guy has lived in texas. Where’s my phone. I need to call my mom.’ Of course not.
This being said, simply because one person has a type of shot does absolutely not reflect whether or not it’s good/effective/well-done. Give the matter some critical thought if you’re shopping around for examples and styles you’d like to emulate, but simply because something exists does not me
Headshots in 2023
Professional Headshots in 2020 - Five Things to Know
The world of headshots is large, competitive, and saturated. When I say saturated, I mean it’s very, intensely, hopelessly so. To provide an analog, let’s take a cool pastel as our baseline. Pastels are colors that are generally known for being non-aggressive; if they were people they would be described as ‘even tempered and well-mannered.’ For the sake of illustration we’ll then go ahead and further define the pastel as red. Pastel red is an every-day, non-aggressive value that isn’t too high and isn’t too low and resides somewhere in a goldilocks zone referred to as normal.
Now take every available firetruck on the planet, extract the red, make it a flaming neon, add it to our baseline pastel, and the result would be a red so oversaturated it’d make your tomato soup look like bathwater.
That’s the world of headshot photography. And that’s how many photographers reside within it.
This of course begs the question, how do you choose? What do you look for? What are the photographer's methods that sets him or her apart and how is it going to help you? Let’s look below at five items you definitely need to take into consideration about your headshots.
Is the Headshot Photographer a Known Entity, Or is it a Business
Right now, if you go to google and run a search for ‘headshots nyc’ you’ll be greeted with a set of front-page results that’s for the most part a fairly even split between headshot photographers and headshot studios. Let me be clear, there is a distinction.
Businesses that arise from a photographer’s name are the photographer. If something were to happen to that photographer, his or her business would cease to function. All of the art, imagery, and photography being produced would stop. Examples of this are Annie Leibovitz, Ansel Adams, and Henri-Cartier Bresson.
Conversely, businesses that arise from a photography studio (at least in terms of headshot photography. This does not always apply to fashion photography, for instance) are not representative of any one given photographer. Make no mistake that they are started and founded by a photographer (or two), but at their present states are a collective of individuals that make up a company. They seek to fuel that company in the traditional business sense, just like Starbucks, Walmart, and the like.
This is important for a few reasons, but primarily of which because when you hire a photographer known by his or her name, your headshots will come from that photographer. If you hire Peter Hurley for your headshots, they will then be taken by Peter Hurley. If you hire David Noles to do your corporate headshots, they will then be taken by David Noles. If you hire me for your corporate headshots, your headshots will come from me. Knowing this, you’re guaranteed a level of quality and consistency that comes from that photographer’s portfolio and is adherent to his/her professional reputation.
Headshot photographers (as I don’t wish to gain the ire of Milk Studios, again, I stress that this applies typically to headshot photographers) of this sort do tend to offer a product of considerably higher quality; with the drawback being their sessions are usually more expensive (a Peter Hurley mini-session will set you back a cool grand for thirty minutes, for instance).
When you employ the services of a headshot studio, on the other hand, you could have your headshot taken by any one number of photographers kept on its roster. Most studios will keep photographers around that are comparable in skill and proficiency, but there’s nevertheless going to be at the very least a variation in style and even quality based around who’s shooting that day.
As well, studios tend to be predicated around shooting in higher volume; and so your session could be any one of three, four, or six for the day. Named headshot photographers on the other hand, whose services are more bespoke, will only have a couple slots available.
The difference is a bit similar to the choices confronting someone wishing to have a suit made. A headshot photographer that carries with them the weight of their name is a bit like a bespoke tailor, whereas a headshot studio that employs a collective of photographers at any one given time is a bit like Men’s Wearhouse. The bespoke tailor will make you a (sometimes substantially) nicer and more well-fitting suit, but will then charge you two to three times the amount for it.
As well, studios that produce headshots generally tend to create photographs that look more homogenous than individual photographers. Individual photographers definitely adhere to a sense of style and one that’s been developed over the years, but their photographs generally contain a bit more individuality from one set to the next.
Given this, you’ll need to figure out for yourself what fits your needs the most. One thing I will as well point out as that history tends to remember photographers; not studios. This being said, the most influential photographs ever taken are done so by people employing and representing themselves (ie Leibovitz, Bresson, and Adams)
Outdoors vs Indoors
I personally prefer studio headshot sessions over outdoor headshots, but mostly as a matter of preference. Both have a time and a place, and at the end of the day it comes down to personal taste, but I typically prefer studio shots for the below reasons.
Photographers operate around and are reliant upon their schedules. The better and more in demand ones rely on schedules such as these that have been fixed for weeks, or sometimes months, ahead of time. Given this, it’d probably be fairly devastating to book a high-profile headshot photographer months in advance, only to have the weather force you to reschedule on the day of your shoot. Worse yet, it’d be devastating to have the weather cooperate just enough so that you can shoot but in a less than ideal environment (everyone knows what a day looks like where the rain is barely held back and always just at bay. They’re dull.)
If this was the case, not only would you have a less vibrant set of shots but you’d be out the money spent on them. Chances are, if you’re an actor living in New York and waiting for a break, I’m assuming the idea of blowing a bunch of money on a set of professional headshots set in a bleak environment is less than appealing (and make no mistake. Your photographer can not photoshop it to look like a sun-drenched spring day).
This being said, indoor-studios are controlled environments. Assuming the photographer has paid his utility bills for the month, the lighting is controllable. It has air conditioning. You can stop and grab some water if you’d like. Additionally important is that if you’re shooting more than one look, there’ll be a place to change your clothing that isn’t the nearest restroom at a Starbucks (bathrooms at NYC Starbucks by the way are not bathrooms at Starbucks found in the midwest. They’re penal colonies with less janitors).
Outside of not leaving things to chance, the NYC market is more suited to begin with to indoor, studio-based headshots. I’ve no real idea why this is the case other than it simply is. The Los Angeles market, on the other hand, typically is more suited to outdoor headshots. A casting director leafing through a pile of them will see a much larger percentage of images taken outdoors; with NYC being vice versa this notion.
Posture and Posing
Posture’s fairly important for headshots. When I say it’s fairly important, I actually mean it’s critically, unerringly so. In fact, posture is everything. It may seem a bit overwhelming as there are an infinite number of poses and positions the human body can place itself in and has done so for the purposes of portrait photography, but in the context of a headshot and luckily for you, there are really only two you need to worry about; straight-on and at forty-five degrees.
Straight-on is my favorite position and is explanatory enough, in that you’re essentially just looking straight at the camera. The plane of your face is close-enough to the same plane that the camera is on and the lines of your jaw are pointed directly at it. Humans both prefer and respond to symmetry (casting directors are humans, keep in mind) and it triggers both strong indications of cognitive bias and visual affinity.
An article in psychology today asks the question: Why Are Symmetrical Faces so Attractive?
You may, of course, sharply object to this suggestion and worry that you took a test once that gave you a facial symmetry rating of 7.6 (or whatever metric they used to to gauge the matter), but even Angelina Jolie, whose face was scientifically rated at one time as being the most symmetrical on the planet, has a score of 9 or so. The vast majority, if not the entirety of us, isn’t really perfectly symmetrical and we only kind of get passing grades on this, so don’t worry about it.
Forty-five is where your shoulders are rotated about forty five degrees away from the lens and your face is about forty-five degrees rotated away from the lens between it and your shoulders. If that’s confusing, see the below.
One thing you definitely don’t want to do while employing this position is make the angle too wide and wander into profile-shot territory (profile shots are side shots). This is where your shoulders are perpendicular to the lens and, as a result, you’re hyper-extending your neck and craning it around at an unnatural angle to make your face parallel to the camera. This is where super canned and over-cliched headshots come from; you’ve likely seen them on commercial signage or stock photography sites of some sort and thereafter cringed.
Your Jawline. It’s Not Just Generally the First Thing Punched in a Fight
Headshot maven Peter Hurley has explained, more than once, that it’s ‘all about the jaw.’ As a headshot photographer with years of experience operating within the same market (www.joejenkinsphoto.com/actor-headshots), I unequivocally and without compromise agree with him. There are a few key elements to headshots that the photographer is responsible for providing (lighting and composition) and a few key elements the subject is responsible for providing (clothing/expressions/poses). The photographer can of course direct and coach the subject on how to pose and what to wear, but at the end of the day these are ultimately determined by said subject.
This being said, your jawline is paramount when it comes to framing your face, as it’s responsible for the entire under-area of the image and a huge portion of its overall aesthetic. It’s important that it be prominently shaped, articulated, and not blend in with your under-chin. There should be a clear separation of neck and jaw, is what I’m trying to say. Ohio and Pennsylvania, for instance, are adjoined but clearly separated by a distinct boundary line that runs between them. There isn’t this amorphous grey area the two share where travelers are sort of in Ohio but kind of in Pennsylvania, depending on the mood they’re in (which’ll be pissed-off because who wants to travel that way).
Given this, there are a few things you can do to ensure that this doesn’t happen and that your jawline maintains a cut, centered appearance.
For starters, you can lean forward a little bit. I’m not saying you necessarily need to launch into a full-blown bow, as if the photographer’s your sensei and you’re a burgeoning karate disciple. Leaning forward, however, forces the head naturally forward and tautens up the skin underneath. This accentuates your jawline and makes for better photos; which in turn makes everyone high five and go ‘f*ck yeah!’
After you’ve done the leaning thing, extend your head out slightly and jut your chin forward a bit. Remember the Tortoise from Never-Ending story, who’s head remained retracted into his shell but rapidly extended outward after his interest was piqued over something Bastion started talking about (probably the empress, because at the time I had a huge crush on her and my eight year old head would’ve jutted forward too like that) ? Do about 10% of that. If you go too far, though, you’ll look a little silly and probably feel like a bit of a ninny. So don’t go too far.
DO: Lean forward a bit and jut your chin out
DON’T: Do it so much you end up looking like Billy Bob Thornton from Slingblade.
Content is King, and You’re the Content
What’s being photographed is just as important as how it’s being photographed. The photographer in that sentence is represented by the how. He/she is responsible for the lighting, composition, and quality of the image. The what’s being photographed in the image is represented by you, or the person having his or her headshot taken. Make no mistake, both of these elements work together to create a singularly refined product and both of them are necessary to do so.
The point I’m trying to make is that you should look as polished as humanly possible for your headshots, and it’s your job to do so. The headshot photographer can suggest hair and makeup and even introduce you to a hair/makeup artist or stylist, but it’s up to you to decide on whether or not you want to pay the additional money to hire one. If you don’t, it’s then up to you to create the content that’s going to be rendered by the camera (ie do your own, and well).
If this sounds confusing, let me take you back a bit. A woman once hired me to take a set of professional headshots. She was applying to a number of medical schools, all of which required a personal photo. She did the smart thing and hired a headshot photographer (me) and we set a date. Because of an inborn fear of being photographed she then pushed it back twice over a multi-month period. Finally, the day of her shoot, she lay in bed for as long as humanly possible before she couldn’t avoid the matter any longer, quickly did a once over in the mirror, and ubered over to my studio. When she eventually did show up, she was forty-five minutes late and soaking from the rain. Her hair as a result was wet and her makeup was non-existent; despite an extensive set of directions and pieces of conversation advising her otherwise (‘make sure you come camera ready’ was a phrase I used no less than 157 times over the course of our conversation).
As a result, her headshots had numerous issues. Her hair was in her eyes and all over the place, her pores were the size of manhole covers, and she didn’t exude the confident, polished sort of look she was after. In fact, she didn’t even come close.
When she emailed me about all of this, citing things like her hair sopping wet and in her eyes half the time, I replied back that that wasn’t my fault. And it wasn’t. At all. She couldn’t grasp the fact that she had played a role in the creation of her headshots, as if she wasn’t in there or involved in any way. She couldn’t conceive of the notion that I had no control over her wet hair or that she had any involvement in it’s creation.
My point: A photographer photographs what’s in front of him or her and documents reality as it exists before his lens. He does not create that reality but does shade, color, light, and maximize it’s aesthetic. Granted, with the aid of photoshop he/she can embellish it and make it more palatable, but if the subject is grimacing in half the photos and makes no attempt to do otherwise, they’re going to get a bunch of shots of them grimacing. The “photoshop magic” you’ve heard of exists to do things like eliminate pimples, even out skin tones, and play with color. It does not exist to take a bus and turn it into a motorcycle.
Ad-buyer: ‘Hey I know we’re doing an ad that involves a bus but we didn’t rent one in time, so we got this vacuum cleaner. Just work your photoshop magic, thanks so much!’
Photographer: ‘Thanks. No. I’m going home. I’ll send you an invoice.’
My point is that you’re responsible for supplying the content, because the content is you. The photographer can of course coach you, help you out, and ultimately direct that content (and that photographer should), but you need to recognize the fact that you’re there working together.
I do believe that for headshots, the photographer should have a decent and easy enough personality to connect with a person and help place them at ease, (like me, just saying), but it is not the photographer's job to to take your stone-faced countenance and spaghetti-stained tee shirt and turn it into an image of you in armani, smiling like you’re on the verge of an antidepressant overdose.
Annie Leibovitz once said ‘I reject the notion that it’s a photographer’s job to put on some dog and pony show to make her subject feel at ease.’
I do agree with this, but only to an extent. As a headshot photographer I do believe that being personable and easy to connect with will take you hundreds of miles further than one that isn’t. I cannot, however, physically personify what you see in your head without your help. To summarize this section, the photographer and subject are just as critical to one another and both have parts in the creation of an image; so make sure you come looking your best and embrace the role you have that day.
CONCLUSION
This was a pretty broad overview on getting your actor headshots done, and this article wasn’t geared towards getting into the minutiae of everyday shoots. The reason for this is that is because headshots, to be frank, don’t have to require a ton. Hopefully after reading this article you’ll gain a little more confidence prior to booking your session and it will, as well, give you a little more insight on the matter.
Joe Jenkins is a New York based headshot photographer. www.joejenkinsphoto.com
The Benefits of Hiring a Professional Photographer
The Power Of A Professional Headshot Portrait For Your
Career
Photo via Adobe Stock
The rise of social media and the increasing demand for visual content means that having a
professional headshot is more important than ever. A quality portrait can convey confidence,
competence, and approachability, which can make a huge impact on a potential employer. If
you're a business owner, it can be a significant factor in shaping your personal brand. In this blog
post courtesy of Joe Jenkins Event Photography, we'll look at several reasons why a professional
headshot is essential.
A Portrait Session Can Empower You
Professional portrait photography can help you present yourself confidently and professionally.
A portrait session can provide an opportunity to showcase your personality, style, and
achievements. The process of getting your portrait taken can also make you feel empowered andconfident. This can translate into better networking skills, more successful job interviews, and
improved communication in the workplace.
Make a Great First Impression
First impressions matter, especially in the job market. A professional headshot can make a
difference in how potential employers see you. A poorly-taken selfie or a low-resolution photo
can suggest a lack of professionalism and attention to detail. A high-quality portrait, on the other
hand, can convey competence, approachability, and confidence. It can make you stand out from
other job applicants and increase your chances of landing an interview.
See Yourself In A New Light
Many people have insecurities about their appearance, which can negatively affect their self-
confidence. A professional portrait can help you overcome these insecurities by showcasing your
best features and highlighting your unique qualities. A skilled photographer can use lighting,
angles, and composition to capture your image in the most flattering way possible. Seeing
yourself in a positive light can boost your self-esteem and help you feel more confident about
your appearance.
Utilize Adobe Express To Create Marketing Materials
With a high-quality headshot, you can create a variety of marketing materials using free online
tools from Adobe Express. This is a great way to maximize your portrait, and these resources are
easy to use without design experience. Whether you need a new business card or want to create a
banner for your social media page, Adobe makes it quick and simple. Here are a few of our
favorite tools:
● If you’re a business owner, make a company brochure with your headshot. This is an
easy-to-read format for customers when you have a lot of information to share. Add
photos of your products or the business itself to make it more dynamic.
● Design a professional banner for LinkedIn and show potential employers what you’re all
about. This is an easy way to catch their eye and show off your personality at the same
time. Add text in an easy-to-read font for maximum effectiveness.
● Create an eye-catching business card that shows off your personality. This is perfect
when you’re heading to a convention or other networking event, as it will help potential
customers or partners remember you.
● Do you create a lot of video content for your business or nonprofit? Make a YouTube
banner that displays a great photo of your team or best-selling products. This is a great
way to introduce a branded visual into your YouTube profile.
Investing in professional portrait photography can provide numerous benefits in your personal
and professional life. It can help you present yourself confidently, make a good first impression,
and overcome insecurities about your appearance. With a great portrait in hand, you can build a
strong personal brand and project the best version of yourself to the world. When choosing
portraiture photography, consider factors such as style, location, and experience; take a look at
your photographer's portfolio before booking a session to ensure they're a good fit.
Ready to get started with a professional headshot portrait session? Get in touch
Event Photographers - How much do they charge?
It all begins with an idea.
New York City has a photography market unlike any other on the planet. Photographers here are plentiful and comprise an extremely large spectrum of service; from the guy shilling his services for $50/hr (unless you hire a talented upstart, you may as well just use your iPhone instead. Also this is usually a moonlighter) to the multi-decade veterans commanding rates of $400/hr and up from clients that represent brands. Usually in the middle is where you can expect to find a healthy balance of cost to quality, and in the following article there are some points you should take note of when searching for someone.
First and foremost, in reference to what I charge, I usually hover between $150-$250hr, depending on the type of event, what the market is like at the time, and what my own level of demand is. You can check out my work at the following link, if you'd like to take a gander at what it is I produce.
My event photography work can be found here
And now that I've gotten that own shameless sense of self-promotion out of the way, I'm going to go ahead and look at three different types of event photographers, how they price themselves out, and what you should expect to get in return.
The staffed event photographer: The staffed photographer is essentially a photographer hired via an agency or staffing service that is paid a rate that's typically half of what the market commands, with the other half going to the agency itself (or sometimes it isn't even half. Sometimes it's more like a 75/25 split). These photographers are, in my opinion, the riskiest to hire, since the agency itself usually has a revolving door of photographers and oftentimes the quality-gap is absolutely massive. Keep in mind, no photographer sets out to work for a staffing company. I literally don't know of one person I've ever met that has said 'I feel like giving half of what I earn to someone else because I just don't like responding to emails.'
While it sounds callous, these photographers usually can't make it on their own for one reason or another and rely on staffing companies to find them work. The reasons for doing so vary in that they don't have the experience and or history to provide the sort of product that big companies or individuals want, or they simply aren't good enough to provide a product on their own to begin with.
And so, with this being said, when you hire a photographer through a staffing service, you're hiring a photographer whose rate is going to be half of what that market rate actually is. For example - say you hire a photographer through something like Snappr, Or NYPhotographers. And say you pay that service $175/hr for work. What you're getting in return is a photographer that actually charges less than $100 for their work (and subsequently is probably not that great. You are, at the end of the day, getting a cheap photographer. I don't mean inexpensive. I mean cheap).
In my opinion, if you're paying $175/hr for a photographer, you should be getting a $175/hr photographer - not a $75/hr photographer.
Verdict: If you don't care about quality, hire one of these, but be aware that staffing agencies have a hard time keeping good photographers around (as good photographers typically go out on their own) and are constantly in a state of flux as they look to fill the gaps in their rosters.
ONE THING TO NOTE ABOUT STAFFED PHOTOGRAPHERS:
When looking at a photography staffing portfolio, you may not even get someone that has actually contributed to it. The staffing company could have not had anyone available and provided someone new, or the individuals that added to it could no longer even be with the firm. Beware of this.The Corporate Event Photographer: A corporate photographer is a photographer that specializes in corporate work and bills his or herself as such. Typically, hourly rates exceed $200/hr, as images are used for marketing and licensing purposes, and as well corporations simply have larger budgets than private citizens. Referencing the difference between a corporate photography job and a private photography job; equipment usually plays a large role. While a party, for instance, can usually be shot using one camera and with a basic lens, corporate functions differ greatly. Speakers can oftentimes be far from crowds and the photographer will need to have lenses with long range capability and that can fare well in low light. Experience will as well play a large role as the photographer will need to know when certain things happen that are vital to the function (keynote speeches always have a distinct set of mannerisms, for instance).
3. Private Party Photographer - This is actually where I got my start as an event photographer in NYC and an area
of the craft I enjoy the most. While I do carry two cameras around at all times, usually one will do, and a good
photographer with a 50mm lens can absolutely carry the day and enshrine your event for as long as you care to
look at the images. You can expect to find a good photographer charging anywhere from $100-$250/hr, though
I've asked for (and gotten) $500/hr for seasons where I was extremely booked and there was very little of me to
go around. I honestly think what helps me the most with my private functions stems from the fact that I am my
core skillsets as a photographer lie around portraiture and people imaging and that I am, as well, a huge people
person. Being fairly inconspicuous (while remaining personable) is a key aspect to private event photography.
As well, there are a million subsets to this area of the field and they vary from Birthdays, Anniversaries, Mitzvahs,
proposals, general parties, nightlife, and more.
You can see my private event photography work here:
And with the above said, there's my take on the three most common types of photographers and what you should expect to pay in NYC. I hope this was informational.
Feel free to drop me a line at mailto:info@joejenkinsphoto.com if you have any questions. If you're also wondering what sort of photography guidelines you should be looking at when you are looking around for a photographer, you can go ahead and view my article on Event Photography guidelines from an actual client. This was sent by Coindesk for Consensus 2019.
Fashion Testing
It all begins with an idea.
Photo Testing
It’s generally safe to say that fashion photography is a competitive field. It isn’t competitive in the sense that photographers are winning magazine covers by offing one another in the streets and engaging in various other forms of gangland violence (though I’d imagine there are some scorned individuals shuffling dejectedly about), but it does have colossal number of residents and, while we’re all fairly cordial with one another, we’re all as well really going after the same set of things. While there are a million different articles covering a billion different topics on the matter, this one is going to revolve around one particular area of it that’s constantly overlooked on the subject and is, without a doubt, far and away one of it’s most important (while simultaneously misunderstood) areas.
Enter: The Test (also known as the fashion test).
If you look up the meaning of a photography test on the internet, you’ll get a number of various definitions on the matter; the vast majority of them defining a test as a collaboration between a photographer and a model in order to achieve photographs for both his or her respective books. The vast majority of definitions will as well go on to state that these collaborations are simultaneously exploring new ideas and concepts between the aforementioned model and photographer and boldly striking new ground in the achievement of aesthete. This being said, while I don’t dispute the fact that a test is a great place to explore new looks and break new ground, I think that it’s a misguided definition and offers a warped view on the reality of what a test really is.
To begin with, let’s go ahead and examine why models are (typically) sent out on tests. Modeling agencies are broken up into divisions; with larger agencies containing more divisions. The top level divisions are men and women, and below those divisions are sub-divisions known as boards. Boards can range from main (the agency's primary and top models), classic (30+), curve (plus size) and new faces (models newer to the agency and what today is going to be of the most interest to us). When an agency signs a model, that model is added to an either men’s or women’s division and then included in that division’s new faces board. Once he or she is added successfully as a new face, the agency will then reach out to various photographers it keeps around on file and send that model out, for the purpose of building his or her book, on a series of test shoots .
The shoot schedule of the new model is, to put things lightly, relentless. Many models when they first enroll with an agency are sent out to multiple shoots a week, with some days scheduling multiple shoots over a one day period. The reason for this is that that model needs, outside of experience, as developed a book as humanly possible. The agencies as a result subscribe zealously to this philosophy and welcome with open arms competent photographers driven to break career-ground.
The reason I’ve been speaking up until now of the model’s shoot schedule and how relentless it is, is that if this is an industry you’d like to make it in, you too should be testing just as relentlessly; with this being where I disagree on the vast majority of articles and their accepted definitions on what a test is.
Test, test, and test. And when you’re done testing, test some more.
I once watched a Q. and A. with Bryan Cranston and someone asked him what advice he would give a person for developing himself as an actor and advancing his career. Cranston’s response was ‘To act. Act all the time. Act any chance you get. Act in community theater. Act off broadway. Act in the bathroom-mirror. Just act, as much as you humanly can, whenever you can, and all the time.’ I quote Cranston because this also applies to your test-work (and more likely to any other skill you’re attempting to develop); only with shooting rather than acting. You should, if you’re a nascent photographer looking to further yourself, be testing all the time. You should be testing at every chance you get and as many models as you humanly can, with this idea clashing, of course, with the conventionally held idea of what a test shoot is.
Google’s snippet answer to ‘What is a test photo shoot.’
A test shoot is simply industry speak for "a shoot where a team come together to produce work for everyone's portfolio." Simply put, a bunch of creatives come together, make beautiful images, everyone (most of the time) works for free, and gets to use the images to build their portfolio.
The first thing to take note of this:
It is absolutely not possible to test at a high frequency and have a makeup artist, hair stylist, and wardrobe stylist present for every shoot. In fact, it’s not possible to shoot at a high frequency and to have one-third of those people available for every shoot, or at least half the time. Additionally, it is absolutely ok if you don’t, so long as you can produce images that the agencies can use for the models books.
There. I feel better. I’m not trying to speak disparagingly of others, but every time I look at definitions like these I can’t help but feel they’re written by people that are simply rephrasing the definitions of others and not speaking directly from experience.
Other forms of photography:
Event Photography Guidelines from an Actual Client
It all begins with an idea.
Just getting into event photography and wondering what your clients expect of you? Some client demands are rather light (photograph people, preferably smiling, and with a pulse, and we'll be alright) and others are rather...not at all light (I'd like to see this person's pupils at 334pm while its raining outside). Nevertheless, to give you an idea of what's expected of you as an event photographer and your event photography work, below is a list of guidelines from an actual client.
I shot for Coindesk in 2018, at their annual Crypto conference #consensus, and the attached dossier is what was expected of me.
I hope this gives you some insight into how clients think and what they expect, and if you have any questions, feel free to write me a note at <a href="mailto:info@joejenkinsphoto.com">info@joejenkinsphoto.com</a>.
Event Marketing Photography Guidelines
The goal of event marketing is to demonstrate the value of a specific event experience through various communication channels as expressed through visual and textual messaging.
Event photography has a significant role in representing the visual identity of the event brand and experience and therefore must maintain clear guidelines related to the equipment, style, quality and consistency of event photographs.
Event Photography Guidelines
Flash
Avoid during presentations or intimate break out sessions, due to disruption.
When using, use bounce “fill flash’ rather than direct flash on automatic settings, to soften the effect and register some ambient light and scene setting in the background to give the photographs context. These will then blend well with the majority of photographs taken with no flash.
Camera and lenses
Use a camera body designed for performing well in low light (usually a smaller sensor / top of the range such as the Nikon D5) to eliminate noise and maintain color vibrancy and sharpness in the images when shooting without flash at a high ISO.
Lenses should be fast (f2.8) and pro level lenses of the top quality
Style
Use various focal lengths to give variety to the client. All shots should contain context to the event (for example, branding in the background, an impression of other people attending etc).
Long lens photographs shot at 2.8 can be fixed on a delegate asking questions during a Q&A session, with “100’s” of other delegates visible in the background.
Wide shots to show the auditorium packed (avoid empty seats), with branding present.
Quality
All photography are to be turned around quickly* and efficiently, color corrected, straightened and cropped where necessary.
* Turn around time to be decided prior to the start of contract. Never to exceed more than 48 hours after event conclusion.
Consistency
Always think that each photograph will be part of a set and depict the brand of the Company you are working for. This is not the time for “experimental” shots.
Listen to the brief and cover all sections in the same consistent style.
Invest: NYC Event Marketing Photography Brief
Attendees
Smiling, eyes open.
No food or drinks in hand.
Make note of any badges or logos as these will need to be photoshopped out of
shots.
Retouch blemishes and yellowed teeth only.
Networking
Tight shots, focused on engaging conversations 1:1 or 1:few
Breakouts/General sessions
Wide audience shot
Tight individual shot
Minimize appearance of devices in shots
Minimize appearance of empty seats
Speakers
Tight, clean shots.
Limit noise of background branding as this may quickly date the image and prevent reuse.
Standing shots in “power pose” positions.
Seated shots should make the speaker look engaged or engaging.
Receptions
Candid shots of attendees.
Variety of venue and refreshment selection.
Limited brand presence.
Exhibit hall
NO shots of empty booth or low traffic areas.
Tight shots of exhibitors and prospects.
Shots of demonstrations and meetings are HIGHLY encouraged.
High traffic booth shots
Activations/swag
Sponsor signage
General Event Photography
Sponsor Branding & Signage
Registration
Signage, Directional, Clings
Expo hall, exhibits, products & demos
Attendees interacting at the booths with clear signage
Attendees wearing crypto outfits
All Exhibitor Booths
CoinDesk Branding
Registration
Main Stage
Directionals
Networking Space
-Meal Functions
Trade Secrets Room
Press Room
Speaker Ready Room
So, to wrap up, this is what a real set of guidelines looks like from an actual client. If you'd like to take a look at my event photography and see what conference or expo documentation looks like, check out my event photography work here.
Additionally, if you would like to see more blog postings, esp
What to wear for actor headshots
It all begins with an idea.
What to wear for actor headshots
What to wear for your headshots is very literally a question that was likely presented before the first headshot was ever taken. Think about it. One day a man or woman was sitting around, wondering what to wear to the photo session they’d set up for a close-up portrait they’d determined was necessary for some burgeoning use-case that we can safely say was not for an online dating profile. The internet wasn’t yet around, people weren’t yet aware of the horror that is processed foods, and guys still had to go up to girls on the street and be like ‘sup’ to express their romantic interest.
Blogs didn’t yet exist at the time and so women couldn’t in turn vent their frustrations about being constantly approached by men on the street whose expressions of courtship were communicated through use of the word ‘sup’ and so it was, subsequently, a time of great frustration.
Anyway, circling back to the subject at hand, there was a first ever headshot session and it was preceded by a person opening their closet, looking at the contents inside, and being hopelessly and profoundly overwhelmed by the choices that lay inside.
‘What do I wear?’ is far and away the most common question received prior to my headshot sessions. Not only is it the most common question received, it’s one that I get prior to about eighty percent of the time (meaning I actually get it more often than I do not get it). And so, with this all being said, I’ve decided to go ahead and prepare a guide you can use in preparation for your big day. This way, you can move on to stressing out about more important things (the suspicious circumstances surrounding King Tut’s death, would Justin Bieber’s baby be musical, does this Chinese symbol tattoo I got on spring break actually translate to ‘whimsical goddess ofl splendor’ despite the guy giving it to me stopping and snickering a lot for no reason, etc).
You can, and should, bring more than one outfit. You can, and should, bring as many as you’d like
Unless a client’s headshot session specifically be requested to take place outdoors, I typically default to an in-studio setting (I think New York in general defaults to studio work, whereas the Los Angeles market is geared more towards outdoors). This means that outside of the usual accoutrement surrounding a shoot space, you the client have the ability to prepare, change and make on-the-fly adjustments to your outfits.
For this reason, in the event you aren’t sure of what to wear and don’t have your headshot-looks seared into the back of your eyelids beforehand, it’d behoove you to bring not just one but several selections if possible. You can discuss with the photographer which ones work specifically for your own requirements and settle on the ones that most suit your needs (for instance, maybe you’re doing strictly commercial looks, or a mix of commercial/legit).
Additionally, even the most basic studio will have a steamer/iron on hand, and so in the event you really did bring twenty outfits that all look as if they formed a mosh-pit in your travel bag on the way over, you should be more than able to go ahead and smooth out the issue (I really did not intend on using this pun and really do apologize) while on-premises and ensure your outfit looks it’s best.
Commitment is killing you
The overwhelming majority of actors I photograph in headshots are dressed casually. I should stress that casually doesn’t necessarily mean ripped jeans and a five year old t-shirt with burger grease on it(though I wouldn’t ask you to leave if that was the case), but is more an overall gamut of clothing that applies to things like t-shirts, sweaters, zip-up hoodies, and fitted polos. I realize that casually is a massive grey-area and when pressed not a word I’d be eager to narrow down to too much specificity, but if my back was to the wall I’d say it’d least as more of an upscale sense of casual, in the very least. You aren’t dressing for a club but at the same time aren’t going to your great uncle’s veteran’s hall bar; you’re splitting the difference and dressing for a lounge. Maybe for a first date. Or say you’re on your way to some tech conference with a relaxed atmosphere).
That’s typically the best way I can describe what to wear for your acting headshots. And do you want to know why? Because casual doesn’t commit to any one specific look. People dressed casually fit into every walk of life; whether it be for work, for social activities, or for otherwise. So long as the clothing is clean, ironed, and relatively fresh(ish) looking, you can take casual and go for the most part anywhere.
As an actor, this is helpful because one of your mainstay traits is versatility. The word is very much an it term in the industry and far and away one of an actor’s most popularly cited assets.
“So and so is so versatile. One day she played a rock. The next day she played a coma patient. Granted, both roles involved pretty much just lying there inanimately, but CAN YOU IMAGINE?!’
On any given day, any number of casting directors are going to be looking at your photo for any number of diametrically opposite roles, and for this your best preparation is to look the part of any part and be as chameleonic as possible. Remember when you were a little kid and you played those early childhood brain games? You’d take a triangle and put it in a triangular slot, and you’d take a circle and put it in a circular slot.
Your job is to maintain a shape that as much as possible will fit into both of those slots; and dressing in things like suits, formal wear, dresses, and the like will pigeon-hole you into just one look. Also, it goes without saying, but your pants aren’t so (at all) important.
The most popular tops tend to be:
T-shirts
Blouses
Zip-up hoodies (fitted and on the thinner side)
Polo shirts
Sweaters
Avoid loud colors and patterns
Bold colors, loud tones, and brash patterns should be nowhere within your headshot. Outside of the fact that canary-yellow really has limited use-case to begin with, it’s going to be the first thing a casting director notices when he/she looks at your headshot. Not only will it be the first thing he/she notices, it’ll likely be the only thing that he or she notices.
The clothing you wear should complement your shot but not be the focus of it. If you’re sitting there thinking ‘this is the most fantastic, bedazzling, grandiose outfit I own,’ that’s great, but you likely shouldn’t wear it to your headshot session. You may object to this and remind me that you spent two week’s worth of paychecks on said outfit, and I can empathize, but an outfit that commands ninety percent of the viewers attention shouldn’t be worn.
As well, you can take this sentiment and by extension apply it to jewelry. I’m almost universally opposed to necklaces for actor headshots, but a couple small stones can supplement an image quite well. A couple large hoops on the other hand will vie for the viewers attention and command a portion of it larger than you want.
Remember Inglorious Basterds? It had an all star cast replete with Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brun, and many other talented actors. Nevertheless, Christoph Waltz completely, thoroughly, and unapologetically stole the show; with ninety-percent of what people remember of the movie being Hans Lander. And an opera-going Brad Pitt going ‘grazi.’
The moral of that story is: don’t let your outfit do that.
Things to avoid:
Dots
Stripes
Lines
Big Jewelry
Big Ruffles
Large Frills
Cheap Thrills
Be unapologetically yourself
Emilia Clarke, forever enshrined within popular culture as Queen Khalisi, danced the funky chicken at her Game of Thrones audition. Seriously. This 5’2” girl from Oxfordshire came to an audition for an upcoming HBO series that would forever change the landscape of television as we know it, make people lose in the process what can only be appropriately described as ‘their shit,’ and irreversibly change the course of her life, walked into a room of showrunners, casting directors, and decision-makers, and danced. The funky. Chicken.
Would you like to know why she danced the funky chicken? Emilia Clarke danced the funky chicken because Emilia Clarke dances the funky chicken when she’s alone in a room, in the shower getting ready, and in her now much more expensive car on it’s way to the beach (or wherever she goes).
The point I’m trying to make is that Emilia Clarke did that because that represents her core personality and who she is. It was a genuineness and authenticity that invoked that set of expressions; not a projection of a personality she thought producers would want to see.
And thus, carrying my point, is how you should dress and look in your headshots. The person in your image should remorselessly be you; not an idea of what you feel would be the most successful. If you’re a guy that’s comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt most of the time, wear jeans and a t-shirt. If you’re feeling fancy that day, maybe a collared polo. If you’re a girl that spends a large amount of her time in blouses, wear a blouse. If your favorite color is blue, bring a selection of shirts that revolve around those tones.
My point is, be yourself and let your outfit convey the personality that is you. If you want to dance the funky chicken, dance the funky chicken. If you want to dance the robot, then dance the robot. If you want to be iced tea, then be iced tea. Nobody gives a shit about people that prefer lemonade, anyway.
Be yourself and look like yourself. People trust authenticity and people work with people they trust.
Colors
This goes back to the above that you don’t want to pick anything too loud. Canary yellow, fire-engine red, and anything neon isn’t the best thing to bring. It detracts from the main subject of the image; which is you.
Neutral colors and tones are the best bet and offer the safest set of selections for your headshots. If you want to layer but are unsure of how to do so, complementary colors work well. If you don’t remember your color theory (who really does), just head on over to wikipedia’s entry on complementary colors and you can get an idea of what works best for you.
Also, I’m on the fence when it comes to black. It’s an incredibly powerful color and very much sets a tone. It can either work fantastically well or backfire and completely characterize the image. This being said, you can use it, but proceed with caution.
The great thing about expensive clothing is it looks nice and you can return it
Feel free to buy some clothing you otherwise would never in a million years purchase and, after you’re done, return. Finances really shouldn’t be a reason behind the wardrobe in your headshots and you absolutely shouldn’t allow yourself to be economically pigeon-holed into a look based around how much money you make. You still need to look nice and it’s okay if you look somewhat expensive. I’m not saying you need to go out and buy something from Thom Browne, but showing up in a tee made by Champion (sorry, Champion, but you guys have a time and a place and it’s not for actor headshots) is a great way to have someone look at your photo and be entirely unimpressed.
Your headshots are one of the most important and valuable assets that you have. They’re the first thing a casting director sees and your sole point of introduction. Dress accordingly.