Okay, okay - yes I know, business headshots are not fine art. They're not portfolio material. But while you're working on that portfolio that will one day get you that Vogue cover shot, you still need to buy groceries and put gas in the car. Business headshots are a good way to do that. Your mission is to do them quickly and professionally. Here's a tried and true setup. (1) Understand that your goal is not to produce "cool" or "edgy" or "interesting" shots. Your goal is to faithfully record your subject in a flattering and understated manner. That means clean, relatively flat light. Not totally flat - you'll still want shadow and highlights - but flatter than you would a fashion headshot. (2) Position your subject in front of your background - I prefer to use an unlit white background. I position my subject about 5-6 feet in front of the background, throwing it to a light gray. I still see a lot of business portraits done in front of mottled blue canvas backgrounds - the kind that school photographers use. IMHO this is pretty cheesy - I prefer a plain gray. (3) Set up your camera as discussed in my prior studio lighting tutorial: manual mode, ISO 100, 1/250 (or whatever your camera's max syc speed is), f8. Take a few test shots and adjust power on your flash until the shape of your histogram goes all the way to the right edge of the graph without clipping highlights. (4) Set up a key light above and about 45 degrees from your subject and your fill light almost directly in front of your subject. I use a large softbox for the key light and a small/medium umbrella as my fill. Adjust the power on your fill light until the light on the subject is fairly even, yet still shows a defined highlight and shadow side. Joo don neeed to calculate fancy-pants lighting ratios. Just chimp after each shot. If you see your subject losing a shadow side, you know you've got too much power on the fill light. Just dial it back. Here's what it looks like:
(5) Posing your subject: have your subject turn her body slightly away from the key light. Make sure your subject sits up straight and leans slightly forward. This lifts the chin up, creating a more flattering shape and reducing or eliminating double chins. The head should face directly forward towards the camera. (6) Position your camera about in the middle of the head, maybe even with the nose. Here's a couple views of the setup. My subject is optomotrist extraordinaire Rachael Caravalho. The shot is for her company website. Her son Logan came along for the ride. As you can see, Rachael is sitting on a stool while I'm sitting on an apple box. The box is lower than the stool, putting me in the exact correct shooting position.
And here's the shot. Quick and clean, done in about 10 minutes:
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