ade oshodi | pennsylvania and new york wedding photographer: anatomy of headshot

Gina, Dr. G Makeup Artist recently wrote an article for Dermascope Magazine. if you have followed our work www.adeandgina.com you are aware that she is both a physicaian and makeup artist who has used both her passions, in treating skin as well as makeup. she needed a headshot to go alongside her article so i built a studio in our living room, using pillows, stools and all sort of mcguyver equiptment to produce a professional headshot.

the purpose of this blog post is to:
1) show the skill, large amount of time and expertise in producing one photograph. while clients believe that you simply snap a photo. this shows how it took 5 hour to get one..
2) if a photographer has the know how, a good photograph can be produce almost anywhere

This took a total of five hours and 6 minutes:

2 hours for building and testing studio lights in our living room
1 hr of actual photographing
2 hours to load file onto computer, select the best ones, then select the best one out of the best and process it.

OUR LIVING ROOM

this took about two hours to put together

EXPLANATION OF TOOLS INVOLVED

everything had to be tested and retested to make sure the lights

and the reflectors were in perfect ratio and not over powering

each other.

HOW LIGHT BOUNCES TO LIGHT THE SUBJECT'S FACE

there are two flashes involved. one to light the face and the second to light the hair.

the hair light also lights the side of the face. the purpose of the

hair light is to create a visual sepration between subject and background

PROCESSING PART #1

this program handles the file and is similar to a dark room where film is developed. the average person cannot process this and it must be done professionally. if a client asks for their DIGITAL negatives from their photographer, this is what they would be getting. which most photographers don't give out or show because its useless since the client does not have the capability to manipulate/view or process the file.

here you can see a few adjustments made, in terms of color correction. with professional digital cameras, we must set and control the color. the light in the room is "somewhat" different color from the flash. when the flash bounces off the ground it creates a different color light. so one must know how to set your camera to control the color so it makes the skin look like it should. the reason most photographers don't show the behind the scenes is because people believe if you have to do so many corrections that you are not a good photographer. that far from the truth. during the film days, in the darkroom with the use of chemicals everything was corrected.