The Beauty In Specializing
It pays to find your niche.
In 2020, I stopped the presses on my street, wedding, engagement, and product photography business, leaning strictly into professional headshots, executive portraits, and group portraits.
Studying the genre (in awe) with other headshot specialists in The Headshot Crew, I began to truly appreciate the art of consistent quality - in both image and the expression.
Ironically, one of my very first “paid sessions” was taking headshots for a friend. It’s funny looking back at all the things I didn’t know that I didn’t know.
Below are 5 ways specializing has changed the game for my photography.
1. Lighting - When getting started with photography, I was just experimenting. Guessing and adjusting. For my first headshot session, I used 7” LED lights a Best Buy expert put me on - for what I can now only assume to have been a prank. Knowing what I know now, these lights would create “hard light” on a human, the exact opposite of what I was after. What I was imagining turned out to be what photographers call “soft light”. Becoming familiar with hard/soft light, “fall off”, the inverse square law, etc., helped me “see” light for the first time.
2. Directing - Possibly the most important component to corporate headshots. Without it, you get the awkward smile we can all spot from a mile away that says “take the picture” or “is this good”. In a session, directing takes all the pressure off the client, and helps them grow more and more confident as they review images. They take some images, see better than expected results, feel confident, take even better images, see even better results, and the cycle continues.
3. Options - Developing an eye for color, and lighting, a photographer can better suggest lighting/backgrounds that will compliment wardrobe, hair/skin tones, and even different industry/roles. Providing every client an extensive gallery of moods/styles to choose from separates you from photographers who deliver a gallery full of the same expression.
4. Efficiency - Even as a beginner, I captured some great shots. I would guess and check until I liked how it looked. But I had no idea what I was actually doing, and working this way takes a photographer completely out of the moment. In that mindset, it’s impossible to work with your subject to coach, and help them relax.
Headshots are more than a picture of a head. They are challenging because a typical client is not your typical model, and the final image needs to be a close up image of them appearing to be relaxed, when they are highly stressed.
Off The Record - Before I was a headshot photographer, I thought headshot photography was possibly the least sexy genre of photography. It’s hard to be an artist and think anything positive about “corporate photography.”
But, after 10 years of dabbling in all kinds of photography, let me tell you - while it may not be sexy, there’s nothing not artistic about it.
