HOW TO GET A BADASS HEADSHOT IN BILLINGS MONTANA! TIP 3: GO HORIZONTAL AND CROP THE HEAD!

I cannot stress enough how important a great looking headshot is these days. There is simply no getting around the fact that most potential customers will get a first impression of you online before meeting you in person. To make the most of those first impressions you need the best looking headshot you can get, which will help your potential customers make a human connection with you, even through a computer or phone. If you think about it, your headshot will be used a lot, and not just in marketing. You can use it for your profile photo on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and on your website. You can even use a headshot on your business cards and in your email signature to make a human connection every chance you get. Because it’s so important to have an awesome headshot I’m giving everyone my best headshot tips, so everyone knows how to get the best headshot they can get, whether they book with us at Paul Bellinger Photography, or with someone else. If you’re new to the blog, you might want to check out Tip #1 here first, and follow the links to Tips 2 and 3. Tip #3 is below.

Tip 3: Go horizontal and crop the head! This is a great tip because almost anyone can do this right now without even having to get a new headshot, just crop the one you have and tell your photographer to shoot horizontal next time. If you’ve looked around on this blog, or on my website you’ll see I only show horizontal headshots when it comes to professional business headshots, and they’re all cropped very tightly into the head. Why have we gone for the horizontal head crop? The main reason is because today’s devices are almost all horizontal, with widescreens being the new standard on computers, TVs, and mobile devices. As a result, most web developers and social networks display horizontal images more prominently than vertical images, with more real estate devoted to horizontal images. So if you have a horizontal headshot you increase the chances people will see it, and people are more likely to take note of it and make a human connection if they do, because you’ll be utilizing as much space as possible. But why the tight head crop? For the same reason we want your headshot to appear as big as possible, we also crop off the top of the heads and most of the body, so more real estate is devoted to what we really want people to see: your eyes! Cropping the head is necessary to make the eyes as big as possible in the photo and we don’t want to waste unnecessary space on the background above the head. It’s all about the eyes! The look in a person’s eyes is what tells the whole story about who they are, and that’s why looking into someone’s eyes is such an important human connection. By giving as much real estate as possible to your eyes, your chances of making a human connection will dramatically increase. That’s also why we want to keep headshots cropped very tightly around the head, and not include much of the body at all. Vertical headshots and portraits tend to include far too much of the body, making the eyes too small to make a human connection with the eyes. Take a look at your current profile pics, if you can’t see your eyes very clearly then you need to crop it tighter!

For these reasons, the horizontal head cropped headshot is very popular right now, it’s the biggest trend in headshots in the major photography markets in New York City and Los Angeles. So naturally people are associating a horizontal headshot with being very modern, while the vertical headshot is starting to look more traditional and maybe even old-fashioned. Cropping into heads is also very common, it’s very popular in magazines, especially fashion magazines. Just look at any magazine rack and you’ll see head crops everywhere. Again the head crop is thought to be very modern and in fashion. Just as an FYI, I always include the whole head during my sessions and deliver cropped and uncropped versions, just in case anyone needs the top of their head for something! If you didn’t read it already, check out Tip #2 here! 

Tips for photographers: This is my favorite setup for headshots. I’ve written about the lighting setup here, so you’ll have to read about it there. But I want to mention here that I generally prefer some type of beauty lighting setup for headshots, which means a lot of soft light that is flattering for all skin types. To get the light as soft as possible you bring the lights as close to the subjects face as possible. Bringing the lights close has the added benefit of creating very fast falloff, which slims the face and creates dimension, ensuring that your portraits are flattering but don’t ever look flat. For the most part, all you need is one light with the biggest soft light modifier you can get (a big white umbrella is nice and cheap), and a reflector or two, which is what you use for “clamshell lighting,” the traditional standard for beauty lighting (Google it!). For people that want to look at little more badass, I like to adjust the ratios of my lights to create directionality and shadows, but I’ll leave that tip for another day.

BILLINGS MONTANA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER – A PORTRAIT IS PRICELESS

In my view, portraits like this are priceless. This is my Dad, and this portrait lays everything to bare about who he is at this time in his life. It’s an iconic image for me and my family, and I was blessed to make it. Photography is truly a blessing and I am very thankful it is my profession. It wouldn’t have been possible for me to get to where I am today without the help of many, and my family most importantly. For all of those people I am grateful every day.

If you’d like to book a portrait session or a creative marketing consultation with me please contact me through my website www.portraits.paulbellinger.com.

About this photo: I made this portrait before a documentary film screening my Dad and I attended in downtown Billings. My Dad has been a willing subject as my portraiture has evolved over the last few years. He was one of the first subjects in my VIP series here. For this portrait, having only 15-30 minutes to set up and shoot, I decided to draw inspiration from one of my favorite legendary photographers, David Bailey, who is known for shooting very quickly. He is also known for using a white background and no fuss lighting. It was a very refreshing way to shoot, keeping things simple and getting a great result.

Tips for photographers: This is a very simple one light lighting technique that actually requires two lights. I think of it as a one light technique because there is only one light on the subject, a 22 inch silver beauty dish with white diffusion sock over it. The light is about three or less feet away from the subject and a foot or two higher than the subject’s head camera right. I’ve complicated matters slightly by adding a black flag in between the light and the subject, to block some of the light hitting his left ear (camera right). The flag is a piece of black foam core clamped to a light stand. The second light is on the background to make it a bright white, and some of that light is reflecting back onto the subject, creating a rim light you can see on his right ear (camera left).

HOW TO GET A BADASS PROFESSIONAL HEADSHOT IN BILLINGS MONTANA! TIP 2: DITCH THE BLUE BACKGROUND!

A great looking headshot will make a powerful first impression for people who find you online. If your headshot looks professional, modern and stylish, you will make a great first impression. How do you get a professional, modern and stylish headshot in Billings Montana? Well of course you can come to us at Paul Bellinger Photography, and we can show you. But since we can’t service the entire city I’ve started a headshot tip series here on the blog for people that can’t get a sitting with us. Tip #1 is about looking your best, and you can find it on the blog here. Tip #2 is below.

Tip 2: Ditch the blue background! The blue background is all too popular in Billings these days and it’s ruining a lot people’s headshots. The speckled blue background with the extreme spotlight/vignette and hair light is the worst offender. It looks dated, plain and simple. It’s a look that was popularized by Lifetouch in the 80s and 90s for high school yearbook pictures with a ton of hair light to highlight the massive hair of the day. So the first problem is that blue background is not modern, it’s not stylish, no matter how professionally it can be done. In fact, any colored background will inevitably look dated and will be associated with a particular era (the brick wall background for instance, is very 80s). The second problem with the blue background is another problem that all colored backgrounds have: it’s distracting. When people browse your website or check out your profile on LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter, etc. they are only going to look for a few seconds, and you want them to connect with your face for as many of those seconds as possible so they start to feel like they know you. As soon as they make that human connection, you’ve got a chance. But when you have a colored background the eye immediately gets distracted away from the face and onto the background, so no connection is made in those brief few seconds and they move on to the next candidate. So to reiterate a point made in Tip #1 nothing in your headshot should compete with your face for attention. No jewelry, clothing, hair/makeup, or background should attract more attention than your face.

So now that it’s clear you shouldn’t use a colored background, and especially the blue speckle (or brick wall), what kind of background fits the criteria of professional, modern and stylish? Keep it simple! There are only 3: black, white, and gray. There is a reason these are the background colors preferred over the generations by the great master portrait artists, they look timeless, which means they always look both modern and classic and can never be pinpointed to a single era. But why did the great masters start using black, white and gray to begin with? Because these neutral, colorless backgrounds do not distract the viewers attention away from the face, making the face the true centerpiece of portraiture over the ages. Pick up any fashion magazine today, and you’ll see black, white and gray backgrounds are ubiquitous. So in conclusion, when you’re looking for a headshot photographer in Billings Montana, make sure to request a headshot on a black, white or gray background, and ditch the blue background. Read Tip #3 here!

Tips for photographers: This is the same headshot lighting technique I discussed in the previous post here. The only difference is that I’ve turned the background light off, so now the white wall is going gray. I love gray! You can adjust how dark or light the gray is by adjusting the distance between the subject and the background. When you move the subject closer to the background you also move your lights on the subject closer to the background and the white wall becomes a lighter shade of gray. Move them farther away from the background and it’ll go a darker shade of gray until it eventually goes black if you move far enough away from the background. Enjoy!

HOW TO GET A BADASS PROFESSIONAL HEADSHOT IN BILLINGS MONTANA! TIP 1: LOOK GOOD!

Everybody needs a great headshot these days. Most new clients will meet you online before ever meeting you in person and your headshot makes the biggest first impression. So it’s very important that wherever people can find you online, your headshot looks professional, modern and stylish. I’ve been telling this to people in Billings Montana for over a year now, but it is apparent that what I mean by “professional, modern and stylish,” must not be very clear, because I’m seeing a lot of people with unprofessional, dated, and lame headshots. If you come to me for your headshots I’ll show you what I’m talking about and give you a headshot that will make the best first impression possible for you and your business. But I know that not everyone in town can afford the luxury of having me as their headshot photographer, so I’ve put together some headshot tips so you can still get a badass headshot. I’m dropping the tips one at a time and here’s the first one.

Tip 1: Look good! This one is on you, put some effort into it! Do everything you can to come in for your headshot session looking great and looking like you want to look. Whatever your personal style may be, make sure your clothes fit how you want them to fit, and are not wrinkled. If necessary, get a haircut, get groomed, or book a professional hair and makeup artist for your headshot session so that you’ll look your absolute best. If you book a headshot session with me you’ll have the option of having a professional hair and makeup artist in the studio, keeping a close eye on your hair while we shoot so your hair looks amazing. I work closely with my favorite hair and makeup artist Sydney Ross, who is one of the few true professionals in Billings at camera-ready makeup and hair. We do this all the time and we know how to make sure you look flawless on camera. We also do a pre-consultation with our clients about what to wear. In general I advise neutrals, gray, black, white, off white, and earth tones. Bright colors, patterns and accessories are distracting and we want your headshot to feature YOU, not your clothes. Your look should compliment your personality, not compete with it. That’s it! The rest is on your photographer! Unfortunately I see a lot of photographers doing headshots that either don’t know how to, or simply aren’t doing their damnedest to make their clients look good. I’ll tell you what to look for and what to ask when picking a headshot photographer in the next tips, but I’ll let you in on a little secret right here: a good camera doesn’t make a difference if it’s not in the hands of someone who has carefully studied the art of the headshot. Any photographer can give you a mediocre headshot, but only a headshot specialist who knows how to make a great headshot can truly make you look your best. Be sure to follow along! Tip #2 is here! www.portraits.paulbellinger.com

Tips for photographers: This is a four light setup, three on the face and one on the background. The light setup is the right triangle setup made popular by Peter Hurley, the headshot king. Using two stripboxes and a small softbox I make a right triangle with lights and shoot through the triangle. I use a stripbox and the softbox to create a 90 degree right angle with the softbox on bottom. A second stripbox makes the hypotenuse of the right triangle. Some people use this setup and keep the lights all at the same power, but I personally like to have a definitive key light so that the direction of the highlights and shadows does not get confused. The key light is the vertical stripbox (as opposed to the angled hypotenuse stripbox). In this case it is camera left and is about a stop brighter than the other the two fill lights. The catchlights in the eyes make the setup very obvious, so look closely and you’ll see exactly how my lights are placed. Bring the subjects as close to the lights as possible while still keeping the catchlights fully within the colored part of the eye (don’t let the catchlights leak into the white of the eye, it’s not pleasing). The background light is a bare strobe with 8 inch reflector right behind the subject. I light the white wall to the point that the white starts to get blown out on the histogram. Make sure to keep the subject about 10 or more feet from the white wall or the background light will bounce and backlight your subject.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! AND HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO MY WIFE!

Happy New Year! January 1 is a special day for me because my wife and I were married in India on January 1, 2010. It’s been six years and I have to say that convincing her to marry me was the best decision I’ve ever made. She makes my day, every day. We spend a lot of time together and yet we can’t get enough of each other. We’re blessed. We had an amazing 2015 and 2016 will be just as awesome. 2015 was a year of travel and adventure and I accomplished a lifelong goal to visit all 50 US states with a roadtrip to Alaska. I also visited 5 different countries in 2015, and that is a personal high for one year but I look forward to breaking that number routinely in the coming years. 2016 has a tough act to follow, but the possibilities are endless when you face everyday with the love and appreciation of a lifelong partner. Thank you to everyone who has made this dream life possible, and most importantly, my amazing beautiful wife Nisha!

Tips for photographers: Looking at the nearly 60 blogs I wrote in 2015 it’s obvious that I’ve got my game face on when it comes to improving my technique and vision. I’m shooting constantly and fine tuning my skills. I can’t be satisfied and I won’t be. I’m coming close to mastery of the tools at my fingertips but I don’t think my vision will ever stop evolving and right now it’s still advancing quickly. I’m speeding out of control on the “road to seeing” to use Dan Winters’ phrase, but my foot is still on the gas pedal. I’m looking forward to the road ahead. Cheers to 2015 and making 2016 the best year yet! This picture? She’s facing a big window behind me at my studio. www.paulbellinger.com

BILLINGS MONTANA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER – PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS HEADSHOTS THAT AREN’T BORING!

Everyone needs a good-looking headshot these days! With profile photos on several different social media accounts, your headshot may be seen by potentially thousands of people before they ever meet you in person. Your headshot makes an immediate impression so it’s important that your online presence is carefully curated to create the impression you want the world to see. The world has changed and boring headshots aren’t going to work anymore! You need a headshot that will stand out from the crowd of boring profile pics and amateur looking cell phone selfies. Lucky for you it’s easy to stand out for the right reasons if you hire a professional portrait photographer, especially if you find a photographer that understands the art of the headshot. When you find the right photographer make sure and give them some creative leeway, after all you’re hiring them for their taste and expertise, don’t hamstring them by requesting a boring “safe” look. Let them make something exceptional for you. At Paul Bellinger Photography we specialize in badass portraits and headshots that will help make your online presence pop! To book your sitting visit www.portraits.paulbellinger.com.

Tips for photographers: This headshot lighting is inspired by Peter Hurley’s lighting technique. I initially set out to replicate the Peter Hurley look, but then quickly got shadowy. So I started with three lights on the face, to create a triangle catchlight pattern in the eyes similar to one that Peter Hurley uses. Essentially I created a right triangle out of light modifiers with a two or three foot opening in the middle to shoot through. Bringing the subject close to the lights creates something of a big ring-light pattern with quick falloff on the face and catchlights that can be very striking. But in my opinion there is too much fill in the shadows when the subject’s face is surrounded by big lights so I tweaked the ratios between the three lights until there was a clear shadow pattern that creates dimension on the face. Camera left I used a large 5 foot octabox in a vertical position perpendicular to the subject’s face as the key light, with the power set about 3 stops brighter than the other two lights, which will act as fill and catchlights. Underneath the camera a few feet below the subject’s face is a 4 foot softbox pointing straight up at the ceiling, creating a right angle with the octabox key light, forming two sides of a right angle triangle. The third light acts as the hypotenuse of the right triangle, connecting the other two on a 45 degree angle. You can see each of the modifiers in the catchlights if you look closely, although the key light is most prominent. To finish off the look I added a silver reflector behind the subject out of frame to the camera right that creates the edge light you see on the camera right side of the subject’s face.  See more headshots, including tips for photographers by clicking here.

BILLINGS MONTANA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER – TWO OF MY FAVORITE HEADSHOTS!

One of the blessings of being a portrait photographer is making portraits of the people you love the most. All portraits are special but portraits of the people you love are priceless. These are my wife’s parents, Ma and Baba, and for going on six years now, they’re my parents too. They recently made their second trip to the US for Thanksgiving and they spent over a week in Billings Montana with us. I am very thankful that I got to spend about three hours with them in the studio and we made some beautiful portraits that my wife and her family and I will forever cherish. Ma and Baba are back in Hazaribagh India now, safe and sound. Thank you to everyone who made them feel welcome during their time here.

Everyone needs a professional headshot as part of their online presence these days! Your various online profile photos will be viewed thousands of times more than your actual face will be! If you’re in business, you shouldn’t settle for anything less than putting your best face forward and you only get that from a professional portrait photographer. Visit www.portraits.paulbellinger.com to book a headshot or portrait in Billings Montana.

Tips for photographers: Do you recognize this lighting technique? It’s the same as the last post. I mentioned that I use this lighting technique often because it’s so easy to set up and everyone always loves this look (especially women). I mentioned to Ma that these would be her favorites when we were shooting this look and sure enough, when it came time to pick her absolute favorite image from her sitting, this was her favorite. Read the last post here.

BILLINGS MONTANA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER – BADASS HEADSHOT

Here’s another great example of a badass headshot that we’ve made recently! The dramatic lighting and bright eyes make for a very striking image that stands out from the crowd of boring headshots in Billings Montana. It may be a little too dramatic for some industries, but it’s great for actors, models, artists and anyone looking for an eye-catching edgy editorial portrait. It would also make a great professional portrait for anyone wanting to convey power with their headshots, such as lawyers, business managers and CEO’s. But the main point is that at Paul Bellinger Photography we can make a headshot or portrait that is unique just for you, so you will always stand out. Please get in touch with us if you haven’t updated your professional business portraits or corporate headshot in Billings Montana recently, we’d love to make something just for you. www.portraits.paulbellinger.com

Tips for photographers: We always make cool portraits and headshots whenever my friend and talented photographer Zak Jokela comes to town. We love to hang out in the studio and test different lighting setups. We never test out new lighting techniques on paying customers, so we have to do a lot of testing with models, friends, assistants, etc. to work out a new lighting technique before using it on clients.

This portrait was inspired by Martin Schoeller and the basics of the lighting setup are similar to his. The key light is a pair of 8ft strip boxes just a few feet in front of the subject and the camera is actually right in between the two strip boxes, which are parallel to each other a little more than shoulder distance apart, pointed directly at the subject. So you shoot this portrait standing in between a pair of strip boxes. Schoeller gets his lights very close to his subjects’ faces, and surrounds them in black so that the light falloff is deep and natural. We took it a step further by placing a pair of black flags in-between the strip boxes and Zak’s face to deepen the shadows on his cheeks and ears. It became our goal to silhouette the ears, because I guess we don’t like ears to be lit anymore (see my previous post here for more on that). One tradeoff for using these flags was that they cut into the strip boxes in the catchlights, making for narrower catchlights that what Schoeller usually achieves. Schoeller shoots very close to his subjects with a large format film camera, so the depth of field is usually shallow. We replicated that shallow depth of field by using the Sony-Zeiss 55mm at f/2.5 very close, nearly at minimum focal distance. The background is just a 4x8ft white reflector a few feet behind the subject. The falloff is so fast that you can make the background go black pretty easily too, but we liked having the gray background to create separation from Zak’s silhouette.

BILLINGS MONTANA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER – VANITY FAIR ACTOR HEADSHOT

This was a fun headshot to make for model/dancer/photographer Keoni, who is also a new assistant at Paul Bellinger Photography. Keoni has been helping out in the studio and frequently sits in to model for lighting tests so that everything is ready when clients arrive and they can be in and out quickly. Usually the night before a client shoot I will have Keoni come in to the studio and help me plan the shoot and set up the various lighting arrangements that I will use the next day. But sometimes we just like to experiment with new looks, such as this one, which was inspired from an actor headshot in Vanity Fair by photographer Cyrill Matter. This is a wonderful headshot look for people in creative professions, or anyone who wants a very soft and approachable look, and it works well with formal or informal clothing options. The lighting is crisp, yet the focus is soft, so it’s a very unique look that will stand out from the rest of the crowd. Visit www.portraits.paulbellinger.com to book a sitting in our downtown Billings Montana portrait studio.

Tips for photographers: The setup for this photo is inspired by a portrait of Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis by Cyrill Matter in the September 2015 issue of Vanity Fair. Cyrill’s image is a crisp black and white with very shallow depth of field, big soft front lighting with quick falloff and a little bit of back lighting to highlight the edges of the actor’s face. I found the look to be very striking, and it was the most remarkable image in the issue to me, and so I bought a copy pretty much just for that one photo (the rest of the issue wasn’t that great in my opinion). The Day-Lewis portrait is the first image you see on Cyrill’s website here: www.cyrillmatter.com. The photo reminds me of a quote from David Bailey: “I just want very sophisticated passport pictures really - which are quite hard to do!" Mission accomplished Cyrill.

To replicate the look, my first thought was to use window light so that I could shoot at a wide aperture for shallow depth of field, and the catchlight in Cyrill’s portrait kind of looks like a window or a big soft box directly behind the photographer, slightly to the camera right to give just a touch of shadow on one side for added dimension. To create the edge light I used two silver reflectors behind Keoni out of frame on each side (I use the metallic side of the insulation Styrofoam you can get at a hardware store or lumber yard). The background is a 4x8 foot white reflector about two feet behind Keoni. I’ll post a bts setup selfie on instagram @PJBellinger if you’re curious to see. This photo was made with a Sony A7ii, Zeiss 55mm f/1.8 lens at f/2, 1/160^th of a second and ISO 200.

Overall I like the look, it’s very clean and crisp, yet soft and unusual with the shallow depth of field that will certainly stand out of the corporate headshot crowd. It’s easy to setup and the shallow depth of field makes retouching a breeze. The one drawback is that shooting with such shallow depth of field makes getting the eyes sharp a little tricky, so you have to know how to focus your camera very accurately. For studio work I always use manual focus with the focus peeking feature and manual focus assist on the Sony A7ii, which essentially zooms in on the image in the electronic viewfinder so you can check focus very accurately, especially when the eyes light up with focus peeking. I really like this feature and it’s fun to shoot in manual and it’s also fun to nail the focus every time. These features are some of the main perks of having an electronic viewfinder.

BILLINGS MONTANA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER – ZAK’S BADASS HEADSHOT

Introducing the badass headshot. This is a headshot that is reserved for bosses. It conveys only one clear and simple message: I am a badass.  It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, everybody wants to hire a badass. Available in Billings Montana only at Paul Bellinger Photography. www.portraits.paulbellinger.com

This portrait has been a labor of love and it turned out badass if I may say so myself. Zak and I put about two months into learning this lighting technique and we fine-tuned it in the studio over six sessions. Thanks to Kenneth Jarrecke for challenging us to master this light. Thanks to all of the people that posed during test sessions, we will drop those portraits here on the blog as they are ready. Thanks to Zak for putting in hours and expertise on this. We’re going to keep pushing and raising the bar for portraits and headshots in Billings Montana.

Tips for photographers:

This photo was inspired by the portraiture of Marco Grob, after Kenneth Jarrecke showed me some of Grob’s work on twitter and sort of challenged me to light like Grob. Specifically this photo is inspired by a portrait that Grob made of Robert Downey Jr., because a lot of people say Zak looks like him. After a lot of hours studying Grob’s work, what we learned was more than just a lighting setup, it is a framework for working with the light that can be versatile. The idea is to add shadows to the highlight side of a Rembrandt, closed loop lighting pattern. Using a black piece of foam core as a flag, we put a shadow on the highlight side of the face, camera right in this case. You can also add a flag above to put a shadow across the forehead as well, something I wish we had done. It sounds very simple, one light, one or two flags to add shadows, and you can add kicker lights on the back side as we’ve done here too. But the trickiness comes in with the main light and the flag, and how close and at what angle to use the flag to add shadow right where you want it. The further the flag is from the light, the harder the shadow will be. You can also change the shadows by moving the main closer or farther from the subject. We prefer bringing the main light very close so that there is a dramatic falloff on the shadow side the highlights are very soft from the close light. For this photo we used a large, 7x1 foot strip box about two feet from Zak’s face. We used a pair of beauty dishes behind and on each side of the subject at 45 degree angles to create the edge lighting (also called rim lighting or backlighting). But the portrait looks cool without those extra lights and you can use reflectors instead of beauty dishes for a more subtle edge (click here to see a portrait without kicker lights, also inspired by Grob). Once you understand the basic framework it’s easy to experiment from there and adjust for the specific subject in front of you.

BILLINGS MONTANA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER – KAYLEE, MONTANA BADASS

Kaylee is one of the coolest and most confident people I’ve met since moving to Montana. She’s from Roy Montana but that hasn’t hampered her fashion sense or her taste in rap music (like me), which is something of a rarity in Montana. She’s a natural and a knockout in front of the camera, so we had a blast in the studio jamming to our favorite rap tunes. Roy Montana must be a special place because everyone I’ve met from Roy is awesome.  Thanks for rocking your shoot Kaylee! You are so badass!  Stay tuned for more from this shoot soon.

Tips for photographers: This was a fantastic shoot. Kaylee brought a confident, badass energy that was refreshing. From picking her clothes, to posing, she’s on point. It was inspiring for me, so the shoot went great. The first photo is lit with a single bare strobe with a 7-inch reflector. This light is about 12 feet a way so it lights up everything evenly with little falloff.  It’s a very hard light from such a small light source placed so far away, so the shadows are very sharp, as you can see under her nose and on the wall behind her. The light was directly in front of Kaylee but I moved to her right to create the angle, which you can judge by the shadows.  I normally use this lighting technique on my white wall and it lights the white very nice and evenly. This was my first time using this setup on my black wall and I like it.

I am dedicated to raising the bar for portrait photography in Billings Montana. I’m working hard in the studio, constantly refining my techniques so that my team and I can always create modern, stylish portraits that make a timeless impact.  Visit www.portraits.paulbellinger.com to schedule a portrait sitting.

BILLINGS MONTANA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER – GROUP HEADSHOTS

I’m excited to offer a modern approach to corporate headshots and business portraits that looks amazing and is very convenient for businesses to upgrade the entire team, including the group photo.  The Rocky Mountain College Enactus team wanted professional portraits and headshots for each member, and a group photo go along with it.  But as any business knows, assembling the whole team in one place is inconvenient and time consuming.  So I took a modern approach and made portraits of each individual conveniently scheduled at their own time and later combined the individual portraits into a group photo. Our theme was based on the Netflix original show “House of Cards,” to make the group look serious, professional, and powerful.  Each team member was posed with the group photo in mind so that we could execute the theme and make a realistic group portrait.  The result is very striking, and very unique for Billings Montana.  Thank you to the RMC Enactus team for thinking outside of the box and entrusting me with your professional portraits.

There are several benefits for businesses that choose to go with this modern approach to their corporate headshots and professional portraits that also produces an outstanding group photo.  First, the photo simply looks better than your typical group photo, as each person is lit perfectly and posed privately without distractions from other group members.  We can even execute a theme, shooting specifically with a group pose in mind (in this case the theme was based on the Netflix original show “House of Cards,” to make the group look powerful). Second, the entire team will have consistent looking portraits, conveying the highest level of professionalism for your business. Third, it’s much faster, as every person in the group doesn’t have to pose perfectly at the exact same time, which requires many takes to get right when everyone is in the same room.  Fourth, it’s very easy to update, if more people are added to the team you don’t have to get everyone together all over again and you can kill two birds with one stone by having the new team members upgrade their individual headshots while also updating the group photo.  If people leave the team it’s easy to remove them from the group photo too.  For more info visit www.portraits.paulbellinger.com.

Tips for photographers:

I’ve posted a behind the scenes photo of the lighting setup for this photo on Instagram @PJBellinger and I discussed other lightingtechniques here.  I learned a lot during this shoot, but I feel like the compositing was pretty straightforward.  It’s never going to be easy, but if you know what you’re going for in the final image you can shoot it accordingly.  I knew I wanted a black background, so shooting on black made it easy to blend each individual portrait together and into the background.  Keeping it dark and shadowy also made it easier to hide the sloppiness of my mask edges, which meant I could do the masking quickly.  If the business wanted to be able to put them on any colored background I would need more precise masks and it would be easier with a white or gray background where there is more separation between subject and background. But make sure to get your exposures right, because separating blown highlights from a white background is impossible guesswork. In that sense there is no substitute for good photography in the first place.  This isn’t a perfect execution, as of course the posing could always be better and I was backed into a corner on which poses would work with the overall photo and the theme, even if I felt there were stronger poses for the individual.  But I am happy with the execution of the concept from start to finish.