Head Shots Minus the Drool

As most readers know, while I'm passionate about (children's) photography, I also have a day job for the following reasons:

1. The kids are eating me out of house and home and I can use every bit of income to keep a shirt on my back.
2. I've been blessed that I actually love both my jobs for different but equally important reasons.
3. While I love photography, I get to work with some of the best (and fun loving) people in the industry during the day.

So when the marketing group asked me to take some head shots I jumped at the chance to see what it was like to work with a client that doesn't drool on themselves. The marketing folks at Guidewire are phenomenal at what they do and till now, I didn't realize just how photogenic they were as well.

Ironically, although most of the photos of my man N were laughing it up, we decided that a more professional pose was in order. My favorite part was making him change in the middle of a public stairwell.

K was equally easy to photograph and a smile here went a long way. The other interesting thing about marketing folk is that they have amazingly white teeth. I don't know if that's a job requirement or what.

Technical Photography Note: Both N and K are in a glass stairwell which provided nice soft lighting and had the Guidewire corporate colors blurred into the background. The location was scouted out well in advance. The challenge is that they were effectively backlit and the clouds were moving in and out causing some harsh direct light from camera right. To accommodate this, I set up a shoot through umbrella half a flight of stairs above me, pretty much hitting the subjects straight on to brighten up their already lovely faces. In fact, they were overexposed by about half a stop and the background by another stop. In post processing I knocked it down a bit, but the idea was to provide a bright, energetic and vibrant look consistent with the image of the company. Overexposing without clipping the highlights, also makes for crisper photos. The aperture was set to f 2.8 on a 100mm portrait lens. Any less would have blurred portions of the face and any more would have made the features in the background more pronounced. ISO 200 was used for its quality given this was a commercial shoot, but fast enough so that my flash could recycle and fire.

Special thanks to Guidewire for supporting my photography aspirations.