Headshots: My Approach, Services, and Rate

Chamber Images: Headshot Reel from Chamber Images on Vimeo.

The top three complaints I hear from actors about getting their headshots done are:

1. Feeling rushed.
2. Feeling too anxious or nervous to look natural in their photos.
3. Feeling like all the photographer cares about is the money and not the product.

I address these issues head on and base my approach to headshots on eliminating them.

Taking Our Time

My sessions last from 3 to 5 hours, but really we shoot however long it takes. I only do one session per day and that's time we spend shooting, getting to know eachother, and talking about what we've shot and what direction we can take things. There's no stop watch, ticking clock, or other actor waiting in line behind you putting pressure on you to be America's Next Top Model in the next five minutes or you're out hundreds of dollars. Of course that doesn't mean I want to keep you there all day, but we're going to shoot however fast or slow feels right for you. And I always have a great time when I do my sessions, so I really don't mind things going longer if they need to.

Anxiety

For most people, when they go to get their headshots, they enter into a relationship with the photographer where they give up a lot of power. Naturally this differential is likely to cause a lot of tension, discomfort, and anxiety. I understand that sitting down in front of the camera isn't really the same as acting in front of an audience, at least not at first. The character is you, the camera has no appreciation for timing nor much of the skill set you've built up as an actor, and you're putting a week or more worth of pay on the line to do something that is often pretty uncomfortable. Who wouldn't be nervous?

There's a lot of things I do to reduce anxiety during the session. Here are three of the biggest things:

1. Collaboration

We work together to get you good headshots. Instead of treating the session like you're sitting for a painting, waiting for me, the artist, to render you in my particular style, with you having no idea what the product will look like until the very end, I treat it more like we're putting a website together. In other words, the process involves me checking in with you to make sure that what I'm doing matches up with what you need and want. You see the photos appear on a nearby laptop and big screen television as we shoot. During breaks we review every single image and you tell me what you're concerned about and if anything isn't working for you. I don't pressure you to like the photos, instead I work to ensure that we minimize or stop doing what isn't working for you and keep doing more of what does while also giving you my professional feedback, answering questions, and offering you direction. By the end of the shoot, you know exactly what you're getting.

If looking at photos of yourself makes you self conscious, then we stop looking at photos, but I keep checking in in other ways to make sure you're satisfied with the direction we're going.

If you're new to headshots and you don't really know what works and what doesn't work for you, then I'll take over a little more than I usually do, but I'll also explain more so you're more knowledgeable the next time you get headshots done.

My goal is to make the session a 50/50 relationship. I don't expect you to direct the entire shoot and tell me how to take photos, but I also don't leave you completely in the dark running on nothing but blind trust, photos you've seen in my portfolio, and a prayer. Instead, we collaborate. By equalizing the power and giving you a clear idea of what you're getting, by working together and giving you say in how the photos will turn out, I hope to minimize any anxiety you might be feeling.

2. Hanging Out

I believe that the more we know each other, the more natural and "you" your headshots will be. It starts with our first meeting a week or so prior to the actual shoot. We talk about your background as an actor, what kind of roles you're getting called in for, and what kind of roles you see yourself doing in the future. We also talk about what you like and dislike about your past headshots and your experiences with other headshot photographers. I'll also go over my process and what the shoot will be like. I'll be writing everything down, so I'll know what your preferences are. By the time we actually do the shoot, it will be the second time that you've met me and you'll know more or less what to expect. Doing a session at my studio tends to feel like we're just hanging out and taking photos. It's an incredibly relaxed atmosphere with lots of conversation and music playing in the background (Pandora or your own MP3 player).

3. Acting

Most actors I've met have no idea how to utilize their acting skills for headshots. I try to bridge that gap. A lot of it just has to do with looking at the situation from different perspectives and learning how to time action differently for a still camera. Getting your headshots taken doesn't have to be an alien experience. By bringing in a familiar skill set, I hope to break down some of those barriers that normally prevent you from looking natural in front of the camera.

100% Refund

If by the end of our session you're not happy with the shoot, you don't pay me, no questions asked. Essentially you get a 100% refund. All that's wasted is time. We'll be looking through the photos as we shoot, talking about them, and by the end of the session you'll have seen every single image I've taken. If you don't feel like any of the shots are a strong candidate for a headshot you can actually use, or if you don't feel good about the shoot as a whole for whatever reason, then no money exchanges hands. I will not question your decision.

I have to get you photos you are confident with and that are good quality or I don't get paid. I have to be on top of my game every single time. Additionally, I don't want the price of the session to hang over your head while we shoot. That only produces unnecessary anxiety.

If you have any issues after our shoot, I am 110% about customer service. I'll do everything I can to help you.

Rate

I only have one price package. My rate is $500. I only do four to six headshots per month as I am involved in multiple projects and different kinds of photography.

I shoot between 300 and 500 photos which are delivered online via a website hosted on my domain. We go through multiple rounds of review to find your top three photos which I will retouch at no extra cost as part of the package and then deliver online at print resolution. Tops are limited to however many we can get through in the time we have, but it generally averages out to between four and six, though I have shot as high as ten. I generally aim for four hour sessions. I shoot indoor natural light, indoor studio on clean white, and outdoors (weather permitting) all in the same session. If we have time and you want to try something different, then I'm all up for experimenting and trying out new things.

If price is an issue, contact me and we can work out an extended payment plan. I don't work on a sliding scale, but I do offer weekly payment options. An example might be $300 on the day and $100 by check mailed to me per week thereafter. Delivery of retouched print resolution images would happen as soon as the final check clears.

Contact Me

If you have any questions or are interested in possibly doing a shoot together, please E-mail me at chris@chamberimages.com and let's meet up!

Girls Who Rock Concert Reel

This is a concert reel Frank and I shot and put together for the Girls Who Rock benefit concert in conjunction with She's the First and AfricAid.

"Seven recording artists—Kat DeLuna, Lenka, Shontelle, MoZella, Kelli Pyle, Vita Chambers, and Cara Salimando—with DJ Kalkattua and host Chris Bashinelli, Executive Director of the "Bridge the Gap" web documentary series, entertained a crowd of 400 at Santos Party House in downtown Manhattan.

The event profits sponsored three girls' secondary school education via AfricAid, which is one of the many partner programs that She's the First supports worldwide by encouraging fun, affordable grassroots fundraising among young women and men. AfricAid was chosen as the beneficiary because the organization recently piloted The Kisa Project, an initiative that enrolls girls in leadership training and digital storytelling workshops, where they learn to share their lives with sponsors through rich, vivid videos."

The concert was an incredible event that went off without a hitch thanks to the efforts of a well coordinated team of experienced, talented, and passionate people.

Pre-Production

In talking with She's the First, Frank and I knew that our end product was going to be a 2 to 3 minute montage covering the event using a music video kind of approach. The next step was to flesh out a shot list that would help us figure out what kinds of shots we'd need to get to fit into that approach. The important part of making an event shot list is really figuring out how you want your end product to play out in the beginning, middle, and end. It really helped us ahead of time to have a few ideas of what kind of shots we wanted to end our video on.

In trying to figure out our shot list, we did tons of research. We looked all over the internet for clips of other people who have shot concerts with Canon DSLRs. We wanted to get an idea of what kind of shots people took, how they edited them together, and how it might fit in with our concept and specific venue. We wanted to see what worked, what didn't work, what's been done, and what we could do differently.

Frank and I also went to the volunteer and staff walk-throughs at the location. We got a feeling for the sequence of events, who was doing what, and we tried to see how that fit in with our shot list. We were able to see what challenges we might face with the lighting and we were able to test our gear and different ideas. That meant bringing out the slider, portable lights, microphones, steadicam, etc.

After all that we took an inventory of all our gear, decided what we needed and what we didn't need, prepped everything and then packed it all up. We made sure that batteries were charged, that we had all the wires we needed, we did tests with some new gear to make sure we knew how to use it, formatted cards, and we brought tools and tape. We went in consciously with more than we thought we'd need, but nothing completely unnecessary.

Production

With a good shot list, actually shooting is all about keeping an open eye for shots you know you need, and random interesting things that come up spontaneously.

Frank and I were shooting on Canon 5D MKIIs. We shot with all Canon lenses: 24mm F1.4, 50mm F1.2, 100mm F2.8, and a 70-200mm F2.8. Our goal was to get as much interesting coverage as possible. We shot closeup, medium, wide, high, low, from backstage, from the audience--we just looked for as many different shots as possible using our shot list (which is more memorized than written down), remembering our video research, and being open to the situation.

In terms of camera settings, we never went below 1/50 shutter speed. We mostly worked at F2.8 and F4 (some shots required shooting faster than F2). The ISO indoors was usually between 800 and 2,500 (often at 1,250). Most of the shots were on tripods and monopods. We usually shot handheld if there wasn't enough room to set up a tripod, or if there wasn't enough time to get everything situated, like if something was happening right then and there and the shot needed to happen that second.

Post-Production

Post-production was pretty straight forward. Once we downloaded the cards and backed up the footage, we organized all the shots in Premiere Pro. We looked through all the shots and put them into a manageable file structure (bins) and renamed them as necessary so we knew what footage was of without having to always play it.

It took some time to get permission for the song, but once that was set, we did the initial edit. Once the initial edit got approved, we pushed everything into After Effects and got to work on color grading. We shot our footage with a neutral picture style with low contrast, so we had to darken the blacks and fix the contrast a bit.

Finally we made sure all the credits were correct, got the final approval, posted the movies online, and then double-checked that the movies were playing right before putting out the word.

Headshots: Kathryn Merry

Shooting Theater Part II

Here's a quick list of tips for shooting theater.

-Always shoot RAW. Lighting conditions are pretty extreme: high contrast. changing lights and colors, hard shadows. You WILL be doing a lot of recovery in post with details in highlights, shadows, and white balance.

-Shoot in bursts. People blink faster than you shoot.

-Focus manually. While auto-focus is useful in other situations, I find that it's too slow, inaccurate, and inconsistent in theater.

-Theater is dark. Shutter speed, ISO, and aperture all have pros and cons that need to be weighed against each other to catch the most light.

-Shutter Speed: shoot as close to 1/50 as you can. Slower means more light while introducing blur. Faster means freezing fast moves but losing light. While blurry shots are cool, very few to no photos used to commercially market and actually advertise performances have motion blur in them. Dancing often needs 1/125 and higher.

-Aperture: I start with F2.8. Below F2.8 brings more light, but it becomes harder to focus with a narrow depth of field. Higher than F2.8 and you get more in focus, but less light. Sometimes you have to shoot wide open because it's too dark. Sometimes people move too fast to focus right with a narrow depth of field (DOF).

-ISO: I start at 1,250. Shoot the lowest ISO you can. Lower than 1,250 means less grain, but less light. Higher than 1,250 means more light, but also more grain. Color is also affected, but you usually need to shoot 400, 200 or lower to be significant, and you'll rarely shoot that. Unless you're using a Canon 1D MKIV, shooting over 2,500 ISO will be too noisy to clean up in post-production without losing detail, particulalry in wide shots.

-If you need light, balance blur against focus against grain. If you don't know which is most important for a particular shot, shoot blurry/slow with a wide DOF, then shoot sharp/fast with a narrow DOF.

-Try not to change your ISO too much and concentrate on changing shutter speed and aperture for exposure. Change the ISO only if the lighting conditions change (like between scenes) or if you really need to push the shutter speed and aperture.

-If people are dancing, you know the shutter needs to be around 1/125.

-If the scene is dark, just shoot as wide open as you can go, 2,500 ISO, 1/30 shutter speed, and try to shoot slow movements. Use wider lenses for a wider DOF. While these photos can be cool, don't expect them to be effective shots for marketing. Rely on brighter scenes for that.

-Only some of the photos you take are publishable. A lot of them will be interesting and good photos otherwise, but the stuff you should submit for reviews and advertising should fill the frame, have no blur, and look good at a small scale while clearly presenting a scene.

-Avoid shooting during dead silence. Try to shoot during singing, loud music, or dialog.

-Pace yourself and space out your shots. Unless you have a sound blimp, the sound of the camera can be distracting.

-My post-production workflow is crop, reduce noise, tone down burned out highlights, brighten details in shadows, sharpen. I never retouch the actors.

If you have questions, please feel free to E-mail me at chris@chamberimages.com.

Production Stills: The Libertine

Production stills from the set of The Libertine. The Libertine is a play directed by Eric Tucker and put together by The Fool's Theater that follows the story of John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester and his life of debauchery and self-destruction. It was a Critic's Pick on Backstage and made the NYTheater Top 10 list!