Pittsburgh Headshot Photography Technique

There’s a technique that I just recently started to use when doing my headshot photography, and I think it’s made a word of difference.  Sometimes you know right off the bat if the your subject needs or wants a particular expression.  Maybe the shot is for a purpose where the subject needs to appear authoritative or serious.  Or maybe the subject needs to look warm and approachable, so maybe a smile would be better suited for their needs.  Either way, it usually pays off to shoot both serious and smiling shots of everyone you photograph.

There’s another reason for using my special technique.  Sometimes when you ask someone to smile, they give you a really weird looking grin and it’s not all that flattering.  You say “smile”, and they give you something you just don’t want to shoot.  What’s the solution?

What I’ve been doing is asking the subject to give me a sequence of expressions.  The first shot is to be serious and then each consecutive shot, a little more smile is to be added, on the fifth of sixth shot, the subject should be giving me their “lottery-winning” smile.  It works like a charm!  There’s bound to be the perfect expression in there somewhere.  Okay, maybe not perfect, but as good as it’s going to get!  The only downside is that these will be a bunch of unusable photos that you’ll have to edit through, but if you’re a Pittsburgh commercial photographer and wants to give the client the best possible photo, that’s the price you got to pay.