I love when complete strangers find this small photography business on the internet. I’ve met so many interesting people from wildly different industries and walks of life. This week a medical biotech startup asked me to shoot their staff headshots.
They provided an example of headshots from another company’s website they admired – which is a great thing for a client to do. So I concocted a minimalist setup that would give them the results they wanted, tested it (of course), packed up my little environmentally responsible yet modest hatchback and drove north to their office/lab.
According to their website, they’re “building novel technology to change the way we diagnose and treat cancer,” and the company “leverages expertise in bioinformatics and genomic science to build the future of oncology diagnostics.” Far out.
On a street with “science” in the name, I met a range of very intelligent people. Some extroverts but most were quite introverted and not exactly comfortable on camera. I’ve been there myself! So to capture these bright people all bright-eyed, I tossed in some medium-funny comments about the gargantuan pile of Milano cookies in the corner of the tiny office we were in, and some chatting about the company and how hangry we all were during this lunchtime shoot. Photos for eight people fit into an hour, including setup and tear down. <— Lightning fast!
That reflector tho! One thing that helped lighten the mood and ease their nerves was having them hold a reflector. Technically it was bouncing light back up onto their faces, filling in shadows and lessening wrinkles. But emotionally it served as a silly thing to hold and play with. Some people even made their own jokes with the photography tool.
In the end, we have some simple headshots of smiling faces. Here are a few of them before I made the clipping-path to give them a transparent background for the company’s website.
Dorky photographer terminology for this shoot: full frame, 50mm, off-camera flash with radio triggers, speedlite softbox, led backlight, round silver reflector
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