Head Shots

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Business this year has been good with Head Shots. Why? With social media and jobs, people do not need a selfie but a high professional picture. Me, I do two types of backgrounds. I use Gray and use white on request.

The nice thing with my setup, I can do these anywhere. When I mean anywhere, I mean anywhere. I have done them in a garage, hallways, small rooms, and even outside.

Headshots are changing today from what I like with the above to cutting off some of the head. Everything changes, and it's our job to stay with what is new. Then as I have said numerous times, practice. You can't be good without practice in anything. Thank you, everyone, for your trust in me this year with your headshot; I look forward to more. (Which bookings look good)

Fall and Senior High School Portraits

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Now that school has started, and the colors are or will be changing. It’s always a busy time for high School Portraits or what we call Senior pictures. Everyone loves color, and for most photographers a busy time. Myself included.

Today I see this part of the business decreasing because possibly more photographers or parents don’t care about pictures like they used to. Whatever the reason is, I have seen a decrease.

For me, I like taking pictures that are different than anyone else. Take, for example, the above picture. This senior loved bowling and wanted that document. I agree you most likely would not hang this picture on the wall, which is why you also have traditional pictures.

One of my favorites and I have many, but one of them was when this senior wanted to know if I could make a picture of one of his favorite movies. So he showed me a picture of what he would like and the rest was having fun.

How about Sports. Yep, again something different.

Maybe it’s Music.

Whatever it is, we will do our best to document what you or your seniors love. We look forward to this year's seniors and more in the future. So to the seniors, enjoy your last year; it goes fast and memories forever.

Practise Time

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The weekends in Ohio have been just about raining all the time. With that, it was time for practice time in my make-shift studio in the family room. This time I wanted to have the perfect photo for cutouts to be used in composites using a white background. I wanted the fly-away hairs and no blowout. So with that, I set up my seamless white paper. To keep it white, I used two 200-watt flashes to light it. I set up a chair about 8-10 feet from the white paper. For my key light, I used another flash with a soft box on it and had it about 5 ft away from the chair.

While crowded, the studio was set. Next was a subject. Yep, I could not convince my wife for this assignment, so I used myself. Messing up my hair so that I would have fly-away hair, it was time to practice. Then, it was time to practice using my phone to trigger the camera. I use a light meter when I am in the studio and begin practicing. I did overexpose background, underexpose, and wrote down what happened. I did the same thing with the key light. (main light). In the end, I came up with what I wanted and time for photoshop and tried different backgrounds and see if the cutout worked. It did. Next time, I need to buy a wig and use it on my mannequin head.