a few weeks ago I offered members of my community in new york  free headshots for their social media profiles. it was part of a program that my church has set up to help people in transition.

besides being able to do something positive with my work it was also a logistical challenge. first it all had to be digital of course. then i had only 10 minutes for each person. not more, not less. initially i thought I would be able to capture about 60 shots per subject. reality showed that it was more around 40 images. some people were more at ease in front of the camera than others. of the 36 bookings 7 canceled last minute which gave me a few more minutes with some people.

lighting had to be simple. I wanted to keep it in one position. just 1 single strobe light in a big softbox on a boom. depending on the subject i also used a large reflector right bellow to open up shadows. i was either shooting with the strobe right above the camera or right next to it. everybody sat on the same posing chair. the softbox was around 5 feet away from the subject, slightly above the head.

another challenge was to get some variety into the set-up. I didn’t want to end up with all the same look and feel. the shots were taken in a fairly large assembly hall at a local church. the advantage was that by changing the shooting angle i could make use of a soft butterfly-like lighting against the white backdrop (far enough away to render grey) or if i positioned the camera at a different angle (position 2) the light would be more in a 45 degrees position and due to the depth of the room render the background black. the difference between the two shots in this post is only the camera position (and of course it is another person), but both were sitting in the same spot. all that changed was the camera position. well, not quite. I had to move the subject about two feet back from position 2 to have the light hit at a better angle.

all images were delivered on CD  in color and b&w, after some color correction and cropping. the people have started using their images and I hope they all find the jobs they are looking for. if you have a job send me an email and i will gladly pass the offer on.

since nobody probably understood what I meant with the different camera positions, I did a little diagram of the setup. that might make it a bit clearer.

and for the ones who want to know it all: nikon d3, 105mm lens, f3.2 @ 1/160 ISO 160 , the strobe was set 3 stops higher, so i used a 3 stop nd filter on the lens. I used ISO 160 because I was toying with the idea to do some shots on my medium format film camera. i gave up on that very early. there was just no time for switching gear around during 10 minutes. f3.2 because I wanted the smallest depth of field possible with that lens.

in the meantime I heard that other communities in new york are offering similar services for people in transition.