I’m not sure why but in the last two weeks I’ve had three authors contact me. Humm, do I have an authors look? Authors typically don’t have any funds for a shoot and don’t understand usage so my fees are pretty reasonable for them. One author was a previous client, I shot her twin daughters a few years ago. The second potential client remembers me walking through the neighborhood and buying the bamboo bed frame from her garage sale! Wow, that’s a stretch.
The third shoot was today and he was not a referral but found me through Google search. I asked Mike to remind me how he found me, he said he typed in the key words “Michigan Photographers”. SEO at work, gotta love it. He said I was all over the net. I’m sure it gave me tremendous credibility. He also liked a particular image I had done for a male model I’d shot in the past and wanted to recreate it for the back of the book.
We shoot this fabulous headshot first, which I have to say really turned out great. I nailed the very first image and had tons to choose from. This is definitely going on my web site.
I shot it with north window light, silver tri flector, two black v-flats and a black cutter for the top of his head. The background is one of my custom canvas backdrops with an HMI lighting it. When I shoot this way the backdrop is not very high and I have to cover my white floor quite a bit, because you are basically shooting down. It’s hard to get dramatic male portraits with window light so I really need to bring in some black to the scene with the v-flats and cutter.
With natural daylight you have to be careful to keep the neck area dark and not loose the jaw, so shooting high helps along with the black v-flats. Again I use my flashlight technique in Photoshop.
I kept the image very strong with lots of pop so when it’s printed small it will still read well.
So it seems there is a market out there for front/back book covers and dramatic headshots for authors that I need to market and optimize for.
F2.2 400 ISO 200
5 comments
I am so blessed to be in this gentleman’s life. Love you bb
Nice work Mary Handsome man WOW!!!!
Mary, thanks for sharing, I really enjoy your blog posts.
I love this shot! Awesome work (as usual). 🙂