Americann with Tim and Ben { Hudson Valley Headshot Photographer }
First off if you’re looking to get a great [corporate headshot](http://www.davebrownphotography.com/Hudson Valley-Headshot-Photographer.aspx) you should check out my portfolio. While I mostly shoot fashion, I love taking my lighting skills to a headshot shoot to create something you wouldn’t be able to get from another photographer.
I had the opportunity t
o work with the guys from Americann recently to get them some great headshots for their new website they are building. These guys were great to work with, and I think we came away with some fantastic shots. Their company is pretty cool too. They work on building sustainable greenhouses for growing medical cannabis. They also work on securing all the permits needed, the actual construction of the greenhouse, and helping train people on cultivation. It’s a pretty cool business if you ask me. Not to mention I felt like these guys had their hearts in the right place, and really feel like the work they’re doing is ultimately helping people. To me, that’s really cool. I always like working with these types of people who are passionate about what they’re working on, and of course people who are actually helping others is a big plus for me.
This shoot was actually pretty fun to work on. They wanted something that was warm and friendly, but at the same time professional. We went with a lighting setup that was nice and smooth, but with a bit of a shadow to create a bit of drama. The lighting setup for this was pretty simple. I had one big octobox as the key light. They I put a black V flat on the key light side (camera left), to create a bit more dimension to the light, and also to flag the key off the background. Then I put another white v flat on the shadow side. This helps to fill in the shadows so that they didn’t go completely black on the shadow side. For the background I used a light grey backdrop, and then to create something that was a bit more interesting than just a flat grey backdrop I put two lights on the very bottom of the background. This created at nice gradient from bottom to top on the backdrop.
The retouching on these was extensive. They really wanted the shots to fit well into the new website so they wanted to make sure the backdrop had no saturation. So I selected them out of the backdrop and dropped the saturation to zero. They also really wanted these guys to look as good as possible. So I spent a lot of time cleaning up skin tones, while at the same time not making major changes to the way these guys look. Whenever I shoot headshots, I really don’t want the final product to look all that different from the actual person. What you don’t want is for someone to see your headshot and not recognize you.
Anyways this shoot was a ton of fun, and I’m glad I could get these guys some killer shots.
