A haiku to hair

Today I wrote a haiku to hair:

Hair, you are so strange
one day you look so lovely
the next, oh so lame.

When preparing for a headshot portrait session a lot of us make a laundry list of all the things we hope look okay. We hope our shirt isn't wrinkled or that we brushed all of our dog's hairs off it. We hope our eyeshadow isn't creasing or our mascara isn't mysteriously flaking off and leaving little black snowflakes on our cheeks. We hope we remembered to trim that one little nose hair that always sticks out of that left nostril...

On top of that list is almost always our hair. Oh, hair. That pile of filamentous biomaterial emanating from the dermis of our scalp which causes us so much heartache. We wash it, dry it, spray it, curl it, flatten it, tease it, dye it, and otherwise attempt to torture it into the shape we want it to take. And it usually resists.

So what do you do when your hair isn't doing what you want it to do for the one hour you want it to look perfect (during a photo session)? You get a photographer who understands your pain and looks out for your hair- making sure it's not covering your face, sticking up like Alfalfa's hair, or being otherwise totally disobedient.

And then you chill out! Smile through your crazy hair because when someone looks at your headshot they shouldn't even be looking at your hair anyway- they should be looking at your friendly, approachable personality radiating from your smile and drawing attention from everything else in the photo to your smiling eyes.. Unless you have hair like the B-52's. Then people will notice your hair before your face.

Can't decide what you look like?

Most people are not like my dad, who has had the same haircut since the late 1950's*. We like to change our look here and there and even on a daily basis... one day we've got a beard, the next day it's a mustache. The day after that it has vanished to mustache heaven.

Although I wear contacts 95% of the time, I walk my dog every morning before I put my contacts in, and I always see the same early morning commuters and dog walkers around the neighborhood who only see me in my big, black librarian glasses and red and white knitted hat. They must think I always dress like I'm in a "Where's Waldo" book.

So how should your headshot look if you've got so many different looks? I always vote for the majority. (we're not talking about political stances, by the way, just portraiture trends.) If you usually wear your glasses when meeting your clients for the first time, then wear your glasses in your headshot. If you're usually clean shaven and only sport a mustache to go with your Tom Selleck Halloween costume, then leave the mustache at home for your headshot.

Or in some cases- if you're an actor and want to have multiple looks for different types of auditions, then take photos with all those looks so you'll have a big pool to choose from. Auditioning for a lumberjack role? Send them that bearded headshot! Trying for the part of a young librarian? Send them the naked cheeks and spectacles look!
*true story.

Spit out your gum.

There's nothing worse than an amazing photo of yourself where your smile looks so perfect, your eyes sparkle, your head is titled in just the perfect angle that makes your nose look so cute... but there's one little hair sticking straight up. Or one little fingerprint on your glasses. Or one little fuzzy from your sweater resting on your lip.

Or one little glob of bright pink chewing gum mashed between your teeth.

Sometimes we can stress ourselves so much about having our photo taken- timing the next haircut and color perfectly or when to trim or shave the beard so it's just perfect at the appointment, or choosing just the right shirt that brings out those itty bitty little blue highlights in your eyes...

For me it's generally about seeing the forest instead of the trees. People are drawn to portraits of friendly faces that catch your attention because of the warmth of the smile and the natural, confident, comfortable ease in their face. It's the overall tone of the image that's the most important in making it successful in grabbing and holding someone's attention.

But something that distracts from that will ruin it and cause the viewer's eyes to go to that one spot in the photo- instead of to the whole photo. Something like a huge, sparkly piece of jewelry, or bright purple polkadots on a tie... or a piece of pink gum poking out of someone's mouth.

So before you have your portrait taken, spit out your gum.

"The Swooning Shadow" and other tales

If I could change my middle name, I think I'd change it to "rim light," because I like rim lighting so much. (Or I'd probably change it to "superhuman destroyer of evil," but that's a post for another day.)

Maybe it's because of my background in cinematography and filmmaking that gives me an affinity for rim lighting, aka edge lighting- films use it a lot to add dynamics to a scene. A light placed behind the subject to light the edge of his or her hair, shoulders, etc., really makes the subject stand out from their background and gives them a solid look. It splashes light all over their edgy parts, but also creates new shadows and gives their features depth. Hand me a shovel, because I dig it.

I took this photo last night as a comp photo project. I snapped the subject's photo with a simple lighting setup, then another of myself for the shadow, and replaced his shadow with mine in Photoshop. (Sounds simple enough, but my mouse-using wrist is still sore and my eyes are watering from staring at the screen for so long...) Special thanks to Dave Hamner for modeling for the photo, and for being so awesome!