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.

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 – 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 – 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.

BILLINGS MONTANA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER – SHADYA’S PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS HEADSHOTS

Shadya is a smart woman!  She’s getting a jump start on her career while she’s still in college, using a professional headshot to help apply for internships and job interviews.  There is no substitute for a high quality headshot to market yourself in today’s digital age.  Recent studies have shown that quality matters when it comes to photos that people relate to.  People can tell the difference between professional and amateur photos 90% of the time, and are more than twice as likely to interact with a professional photo (click here for the study).  A good headshot can speak volumes in a split second, and in the digital world where decisions are made quickly, what your headshot says about you could make a crucial difference.  Good headshots are hard to come by in a smaller city like Billings Montana, it seems to be a lost art form here, leaving the general public to settle for average or below average headshots that are less impactful for their businesses.  But this is a blessing for people who invest in a high quality professional headshot now, because it will certainly stand out from the crowd in this market.

Here at Paul Bellinger Photography we are committed to the art of portraiture, offering the highest quality portrait and headshot experience in Billings. Contact us to schedule your studio session today (we can usually accommodate last minute and same day bookings with two hours of notice).  www.portraits.paulbellinger.com

Tips for photographers:
How is the first portrait lit?  Can you see for yourself?  Deciphering light is a critical skill for photographers and you should be able to replicate almost any lighting techniques you can see.  But you’ll never learn if you don’t try and figure it out for yourself!  In the first photo the main light is obviously coming from camera right based on the highlight on the left side of Shadya’s face.  It must be a big light source because it’s very soft.  There is also a highlight on the right (camera left) side of Shadya’s face, so there is clearly a soft light source camera left as well.  Be sure to check the catchlights in her eyes for and idea of where the lights are placed.  Have it figured out yet?  The main light is a large window out of frame camera right and the second light source is a large 4x8’ reflector out of frame camera left to bounce some of the window light back onto the shadow side of Shadya’s face.  This is my go to lighting technique because it looks good on everyone!  The light is soft, which is flattering for all skin types, and because the light is coming from the side it has a directional quality that provides dimension to the face with very soft shadows.  It’s a very forgiving lighting setup and when I don’t have a window I use a large softbox very close to the subject to replicate the soft window light.  The larger and closer the light source you can create, the softer the light will be, whether you use a window or a studio strobe.

How is the second portrait lit?  You tell me!  There are three lights.  I'll put an iPhone photo of the lighting setup on instagram @PJBellinger.  For more photography tips on the blog click here.

BILLINGS MONTANA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER – HORIZONTAL HEADSHOTS ARE IN

Leslie and Rebecca rocked their corporate headshots!  I’m so glad they came to me for an upgrade, and chose to go with the ultra-modern horizontal headshot on a black background, which is definitely the hottest trend in headshots.  Most screens are horizontal, or at least have a horizontal viewing option (such as phone), so horizontal photos tend to look better and draw more attention.  A horizontal photo also crops nicely to a square, which is useful for social media, profile photos, and is also growing in popularity.  Here in Billings Montana the horizontal headshot is almost a totally new concept, so it has the added advantage of helping it’s users stand out from the crowd that much more while the rest of Billings catches on.  Using black as a background is both modern and timeless and works to further emphasize the subject rather than the background.  The traditional vertical head and shoulder headshot is not going away, but increasingly people prefer to have a more modern horizontal headshot to go with it.  I offer one of each with my “All Business” corporate headshot package, along with square crops, and black and white versions of each.

Tips for photographers:

The most difficult thing about headshots is that the subject expects a very quick session, usually less than 15 minutes.  With such little shooting time you’re not going to get a lot of great expressions out of the subject so you better be ready to catch them when they happen.  You can’t be fiddling with lights and composition, and you can’t miss focus.  Cropping.  There is an art to cropping someone’s head and it’s not always easy to find the perfect crop.  Sometimes it comes naturally when I’m shooting, and if it doesn’t, I try to find the right crop as soon as possible when the subject comes in.  If I’m struggling I’ll give myself a little breathing room to crop in post, but I prefer not too.  Lighting.  This is a two light corporate headshot technique.  These photos are lit with one 3x4 foot softbox camera left about a foot above head height (meaning the strobe head is about a foot above head height, not the entire softbox) and about 6-12 inches in front of the subject and perpendicular to the subject so they are hit with feathered light from a large source.  You can see the large catchlight in the eye.  The result is very soft light that is flattering for all skin types with some directionality to shape the face.  There is a 4x8 foot white reflector out of frame to camera right to bounce the soft light back onto the shadow side of the face.  This further softens the transition from highlight to shadow, but it doesn’t eliminate the shadows so there is still some dimension in the face (that’s why I prefer to use a reflector rather than another light source, it will automatically adjust to whatever you do with the main light, but will never wash out the shadows).  The background is lit with a second light, a bare strobe with 6 inch reflector about 3 feet above the subject’s head pointed on the background so that none of the light from this light hits the subject at all (you can adjust the placement so that some of this light catches the top of the subjects hair if you want a hair light).  This is a simple, go to lighting technique that is very forgiving and looks good on any subject without the tacky “overlit” look that adding a bunch of strobes can create.

www.portraits.paulbellinger.com

BILLINGS MONTANA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER – WIFEY HEADSHOT

My beautiful wife is a political scientist at MSUB and I really enjoyed making her new professional headshot.  She is all business when it comes to political science, so she wanted to look serious and chose the most serious pose from the whole set.  She’s not messing around!  Haha!  It was fun to have her in the studio again after a long time.  I used to make her pose for me all the time when I was learning the art of portraiture.  She used to get so mad at me for making her pose for too long!  And that’s usually when I got the best poses out of her, looking mad.  So I love the stern look on her face, it reminds me of the good old days!

Tip for photographers:

This is one of my favorite lighting setups at the studio.  It’s all natural light from a big block of windows out of frame to camera right about two feet from Nisha and two 4x8’ white reflectors in a V pattern opening towards Nisha out of frame to the left.  Without the reflector the shadows on her face would be too dark and her hair would blend into the background even more than it already does.  The background is a black wall.  Beside my preference for black backgrounds, I also like having my walls painted black because it helps control the light in my studio, which can be difficult because it is small, so it’s hard to prevent the light from bouncing everywhere.  With a really large studio it’s easier, because light falls off (reduces in power) over distance, so as long as you have enough space between subject and background you can always make the background go black, or light it separately and make it any exposure or color you’d like, without having the background light affect the subject and vice versa.  But in a small studio we have to use a lot of flags (usually black foam core) to block the light from hitting anything we don’t want and reflecting back into our shot.  It can be tricky, but if you’re struggling in a small studio, I recommend reducing the light from ambient sources, and using flags, grids, and light modifiers that will let you control your strobes.  If you have a window, you can control the quality of the light by opening or closing the curtains (or you can use a flag or reflector if you don’t have curtains) to create just the light you want.  Read more about manipulating natural light in the studio here.

Making lasting portraits of the people I love is one of the most rewarding things about being a professional photographer.  Portraits become more powerful with time, even if they are often taken for granted in the short term.  We will cherish this portrait one day, and I would be honored to make a portrait of you for your loved ones to cherish.  www.portraits.paulbellinger.com

BILLINGS MONTANA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER – KATIE FOR POISONBERRY JEWELRY

We’ve been lucky to have some new bling in the studio thanks to Poisonberry Jewelry!  Poisonberry is a cool Montana made jewelry brand and Katie came by to help show off the gold My Deer pendant.  This is a new piece that’s part of Poisonberry’s Spring/Summer 2015 line.  Check out the whole line at http://poisonberryjewelry.com and follow them on facebook and instagram to stay on top of the latest jewelry fashions.  Thanks to Katie for always making any wardrobe look good!

Tips for photographers –

Katie needed some new headshots and we needed to show off a necklace so it was good timing to achieve both.  I am really enjoying the horizontal and square crop headshots these days.  The photo of Katie is lit with natural light from a large window camera right and two white 4x8 foot reflectors camera left.  The background is a black wall and there is a tiny bit of window light falling on it to give just a touch of separation between the Katie and the background.  I am really lucky to have beautiful North facing windows, the preferred light of artists for generations.  I recently read in Irving Penn’s book “Small Trades,” that he was obsessed with North light studios and I observed from some of the photos in the book that he used flags to control the light on the background.  The point of a flag is to block the light, or “flag the light,” and they can be made out of anything that will block light.  I use painted black Styrofoam for my flags, but you can also purchase flags that mount on a lightstand for perfect control.  I’ve used them before on c-stands and they are quite nice.  Irving Penn used a board propped against a stool.

The second photo is also lit with natural light and a reflector in a similar manner as the portrait, but the curtains on my window are partly shut, creating a smaller and therefore harder light source.  It looks very similar to studio lighting and by controlling the size of the window light it’s very easy to make natural light look like studio lighting.  The only problem with natural light, as opposed to studio light, is that the only way to make it brighter is to open the curtains up.  But then I can’t control the size and therefore the quality (hard or softness) of the light.  If I want to make the light harder by closing the curtains down, I lose a lot of the light.  So unfortunately with natural light, controlling the quality of the light also affects the quantity of light (brightness).  With studio lighting I can control both the quantity and quality of the light separately.  That being said, I don’t have any studio lighting modifiers that are 20 feet wide and 10 feet tall like my beautiful North facing windows!

Paul Bellinger Photography specializes in modern, stylish portraits and headshots in Billings Montana.  We take portraiture seriously and we’d be honored to make your portrait!  http://www.portraits.paulbellinger.com

BILLINGS MONTANA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER – NEW PORTRAIT WEBSITE AND ZAK’S HEADSHOTS

We’re excited to be launching a new website exclusively for our portrait studio in downtown Billings Montana (http://portraits.paulbellinger.com).  We offer modern, stylish portraits and headshots with the timeless look of classic portraiture.  Inspired by the great masters of portrait photography, we strive to make photos that will stand out and stand the test of time.  We don’t want your portrait to look dated with colored lights and distracting backgrounds.  For us, the focus of the portrait is you, the story in your face, and the power in your eyes.  Let us make the portrait that tells your story.

Tips for photographers:

Zak and I hit the studio to square away our corporate headshot lighting setups for an upcoming headshot promotion we’ll be running in a few weeks.  We’ve created a look that will help our clients stand out, but is timeless, with classic black, gray and white backgrounds.  We’re especially showcasing the black background as the studio’s signature look.  In these photos you can see how versatile the black background can be, from a more powerful look with the horizontal photo, to something more inviting and friendly in the vertical photo, depending on the lighting that is used.  Black and gray draw the viewer’s attention directly to the face while colored backgrounds can distract from the face, as can bright colored clothing.  That’s why most portrait photographers prefer black and white photos because there are no distractions, only a person and the light.

Can you see the light?  The vertical image is lit with a large window camera right and two 4x8’ reflectors camera left.  The effect is a soft, yet directional light.  For the horizontal image there are 3 lights and 4x8’ reflector.  I posted the behind the scenes photo oninstagram here.  I plan to post more BTS photos on instagram, so follow along.

BILLINGS MT PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER – HEADSHOTS FOR DAME AGENCY

We are a full service portrait studio in Billings Montana and we especially love making corporate headshots for business professionals and portfolio headshots for models, musicians, actors and other creatives.  DAME Agency is a new modeling agency in town and I did a test shoot with some of their talented models.  Featured here is Jessica and Tylan, both are currently available for modeling and acting gigs in Billings Montana and beyond.  Jess’s career is taking off quickly and I’m sure she’ll be relocating to a major modeling market before too long.  I look forward to working with DAME Agency again soon.

Tips for photographers: Can you see the light?  The main light is a fairly hard light source judging from the shadow cast by the models’ noses, but it’s not as hard as direct day light.  It’s a 22 inch beauty dish with a diffusion sock on it that is about 4 feet from the models.  You can judge the location of the beauty dish by the catchlights in their eyes and the nose shadows.  What other lights do you see?  Notice how even in the darkest shadows on the camera right side of the frame are clearly separated from the background.  That’s created by a second light on the background, a smaller beauty dish placed up above the models’ heads pointed onto the background to create the vignette that you see.  A very tiny bit of this light is catches the top of their hair (see the top of Jessica’s hand), creating a nice hairlight.  Lastly, you can still see details on the shadow side of Tylan’s face, and that is because there is a white reflector out of the frame to the camera right that is bouncing the main light back into the shadow areas, filling in those shadows with a very soft light (hence the common phrase “fill light”).

Billings Montana portrait Photographer Paul Bellinger, specializing in modern, stylish portraits from corporate headshots to fashion editorials.  We take the classic art of portraiture seriously because we have a passion for portraits that you won’t find anywhere else in Billings Montana.  http://www.portraits.paulbellinger.com