23 Headshots in One Hour

Missouri Street Theatre‘s production of Once Upon a Mattress needed portraits of all 23 of their cast, and we had an hour to set up and light on location, and then one hour to shoot all 23 people. Up to the task? Of course I was…but it would have been difficult without an assistant to help schlep and set up lights, stand in for test shoots, then take names of all 23 people and help move the line along. That’s where my trusty assistant Victor came in:

I opted for simple: one key light directly above, a silver reflector below, and two back lights camera left and right against white seamless.

The biggest challenge was pulling real expressions out of people instead of the “say cheese” expressions you normally see in wham-bam, super fast cattle call portraits. I had 20 seconds to build rapport with someone who I’d never met, so that I could elicit real expressions and then about a minute and a half to shoot about 7-8 pictures. I was careful not to just spray and pray, and really worked on getting subjects to laugh, smile and express something genuine with their eyes…23 times.

The results were posted in Fairfield’s Downtown Theatre lobby along with each performer’s bio during the run of the show. It was an especially fun assignment since I had once nephew assisting and another nephew performing in the show.

Here’s a little preview of the results, but you’re going to have to see the show if you want to see the final, printed lobby shots:

Info on booking headshots, in studio and on location, can be found on my website.