Theatre Headshots for Valley High School

This entry is being auto-posted for me by the magic of the internets. Around this time, I’m probably getting ready to finish my day at work, just like yesterday. Hooray for being finished with work!

I did the senior headshots for Valley High School’s production fo Seussical this  year. I decided I wanted to shoot these on white seamless. That was partly for experience and partly because I like how those sorts of headshots look. If I get the opportunity to do them again next year, so might also bring a black or dark grey background with me to shoot a little bit of variety. I did turn off the background light for some of these, but I didn’t have enough separation to get a really deep grey out of that.

Lighting setup was one AlienBee on a short stand behind the subject to pop the background to white. Another AlienBee was set up in a shoot-through umbrella pretty close to the subject. An SB900 with a warming gel and on-site snoot (Rosco black wrap) was used as a separation/accent light from above.

I had previously read Zack Arias’ write-up on shooting on white seamless. In it, he mentioned that it is a good idea to shoot some test shots with one’s lenses in order to find the ones that give the least amount of bloom and corona when shooting into blown white. It turned out that the 85mm f/1.8, which was going to be my preferred lens for this job, was not so great (and, actually, I think Zack mentioned this). The 24-70mm f/2.8 worked pretty well. The 50mm f/1.4 was the best of the bunch, though, so I used that. I really wanted a longer focal length for this, but didn’t have it. The 24-70 corona was noticeable enough that I went with the 50mm. Someday, I’ll upgrade the 85mm to the f/1.4 version, which gets rockstar reviews and does much better with the corona issue.

Here are some of the headshots, converted to black and white. Thanks for having me down, Valley. I hope to be back again next year!

Of course, sometimes funny things happen:

And, for the record, the pure white shirt is why I wish I also had a grey background available. I couldn’t get enough distance between the subject and background to get the separation I needed that way, partly because of the short focal length I had to use. With a longer focal length, I probably could have moved them a little further away from the background, which may have given me the separation I needed.

Learning lots and looking to always improve. Next time will be even better!