Tips for Preparing for your Business Portrait

It's picture day! Hopefully your portrait session is booked with a professional photographer who is great with people and knows how to elicit the best expressions from portrait subjects. That's his/her job, but here's what you can do to help ensure success before you get there:

If you are the one arranging the session, determine ahead of time and confirm with the photographer whether an environmental portrait (ie. in an office or other appropriate place), or plain (eg. white or gray), or other textured (eg. photographer's painted muslin) background will best serve your needs and plan accordingly. If it's an environmental portrait you're booking, it will generally work best if the location is attractive and has some space, depth and texture -- for example a large room with wood or coloured paneling, curtains and windows, as opposed to a small room, filled by a big round table and chairs, with four beige walls and a white board.

On the day, commit as much time as is required to ensure sure you have time to get to the session on time and to focus on the experience once you're there. You'll need time to switch gears and relax if you want a successful portrait.

Wear something that fits properly (women in particular: something with flattering lines and shape but not too tight or revealing), isn't dated or trendy and is appropriate to your position. This may mean a suit for you, or it may mean whatever you wear in your particular business environment. It's generally advisable to stick to predominantly solid, neutral colours, and mid-tones (ie. not white or black, although a white or contrasting shirt underneath a suit jacket is fine). If you are a guy, it's best to wear a plain (ie. solid, not striped or patterned) shirt because dress shirts very often wrinkle thanks to the tension created by the collar and the tie, and those wrinkles can only reasonably be retouched out on plain shirts.

If you are a woman, knits are fine but cardigans are generally not as they don't tend to hold their form well enough which makes them look sloppy. And keep in mind that the viewers of your portrait should be noticing your face, foremost, as opposed to your clothing or jewellery. 

If you have the ability to bring optional wardrobe, like a different jacket (different colour and/or lighter or darker) do so, and ideally bring the options neatly pressed on hangers. You never know how you and your wardrobe will look against whatever the background is and it might be handy to have a alternative in case tones or colours clash or the contrast between you and the backdrop is not optimal.

Still on the topic of wardrobe, find out if you are doing a head and shoulders, or torso, or full length shot ahead of time, so you can dress accordingly. If it's full length you may want to bring clothing on a hanger so pants, for example, aren't wrinkled from your wearing them in the car, at your desk, etc.

Find out if there will be a hair and make-up artist. If not, and if you are comfortable wearing make-up you may want to consider going to a make-up counter at a department store and/or hair salon before the shoot. We all have good and bad hair days, but it's important to like your hair (as much as that's possible) on picture day.

Ladies, bring at least powder and lipstick for touch-ups. We always bring our powder, but if you have one you like and wear anyway, it's worth bringing. And if you wear lipstick, make sure you've just applied it before walking in front of the camera.

If you have lunch right before your shoot brush your teeth before your session, or at least take a quick toothpick break.

And while you're at your session:

Listen to the photographer...don't overthink the process...just do what he or she tells you to do and submit and commit yourself to, and embrace, the process.

Smile, but don't keep smiling! Breathe! Let the photographer do her thing and smiles should happen. You want to look approachable, and studies have apparently shown that a smiling face is perceived as more trustworthy.

Don't assume there's retouching included and do request retouching if you have the chance. Hopefully at least a basic level of retouching has been negotiated and included with the session, but budgets and 'packages' vary. If it's not, you may want to take advantage of any opportunity to upgrade and get the touch-ups so you will not be limited to using your portrait really small (so viewers can't see any flaws).  

And finally, if you'd like someone else's input, here's a link to an article I like that beaks down "The Perfect Profile Photo":
https://photofeeler-blog.s3.amazonaws.com/perfect-photo-infographic.jpg

Hope that helps! Have a great portrait shoot!

kathryn@hollinrake.com
www.hollinrake.com

P.S. For examples of portraits I've done for some of my LinkedIn connections please see my LinkedIn profile and look for my 'project' titled Profile Portraits.

Selfies Vs. Professional Portraits

Top row my portraits, bottom row clients' selfies

I've blogged about these lovely clients before (on my other blog khollinrake.blogspot.com) but not on this makemepretty blog as here I'm focusing primarily on women. However, the more I see self-portraits in online profiles, the more I wanted to acknowledge and address this trend in comparison to what we professionals bring to the table. And yes, I can make men "pretty" too.

 I'm sure their situation is similar to that of many potential professional portrait clients. When they  launched their website initially they knew they wanted to include images of their staff, physiotherapy being a very people oriented profession (as are many other businesses offering professional services). So not wanting to blow their budget on photography they got out their perfectly decent little digital point and shoot and took the pictures themselves. Eventually though, once they had the time and the means, they knew they wanted to match the quality of their (portrait) imagery to the quality of their business. They were kind enough to allow me to post the old and the new pics here to subject to the scrutiny of my viewers.

It's not my intention to criticize. But, these represent a great example of images that were "good enough" compared to images that are actually "good" (if I may say so myself). Maybe as a photographer I'm biased; the flaws inherent in many non-professional portraits really jump out at me. However, I have to believe that many viewers of people's profile pictures see the same things I do, even if they're not as sure of the specifics, or of how these subtle flaws impact their view of the companies and individuals represented.

Without getting into an entire photography lesson here, I'll just list a few differences that I think matter. First off, the selfies look as if they were made without quite enough thought about the background or environment (notice the crooked door frame). I've seen some "instructions for getting a great business selfie" and they tell you to find a plain wall, but I'd assert that in some cases an out of focus background with some stuff in it makes for a more interesting picture, and gives the viewer more of a sense of where the subjects actually are. At the very least they could have stood further away from their door and wall to avoid casting those distracting shadows behind their heads. The lighting is inconsistent (ie. the two portraits don't really look the same), and not really flattering in either snapshot. And the colour balance is also inconsistent, again impacting the portraits' ability to create or maintain the feeling of a purposeful and consistent brand. As for expression, the snapshots aren't terrible. The therapists look happy. But in our shots I'd suggest they look not only happy, but also professional.

If you feel it's your time for a portrait upgrade, please get in touch with me.

kathryn@hollinrake.com
www.hollinrake.com

10-ish Questions to Ask When Looking for a Business Portrait Photographer OR Why Pay More?

OR  Reasons Not To Cheap Out on Portrait Photography

 
by Kathryn (Kate) Hollinrake

You've been asked to submit a portrait of yourself for the internal directory of the company you work for, or for an upcoming speaking engagement, or you need one for your website, or for an online networking site, or you have to book a business portrait session for your boss. You don't know a photographer and if you do a Google search for, say, Toronto, you get over a million results. Finding a photographer can be a daunting proposition. Many of the people I work with, by virtue of their jobs in advertising, graphic design, corporate marketing and communications, publishing etc. know the value of good photography, but there's another sector who hail from unrelated backgrounds and have no experience in (through no fault of their own), or reason to understand, the buying of photography as the service and product that it is. The following is for this group. In this day of almost everyone having a pretty good camera and really anyone being able to call themselves a pro, and photography, increasingly, being perceived as a commodity, how do you differentiate between photographers who say they're professionals and those who actually are, and what difference does it make anyway? Most importantly, what is the difference between a good picture and and a bad one?

It would seem to me that there is some confusion regarding the answer to this question. Maybe people are just too busy. I'm not sure. If you've looked online at professional networking sites and corporate websites you will have seen the vast array of portraits that range from polished and professional, to professionally done but just not very good (poor lighting, strange colour shifts, awkward, uncomfortable poses and expressions) to amateur and downright inappropriate (think sunglasses on head, drink in hand, shoulder of fellow partier just not quite cropped out).

Who would you trust? O.K., I admit most people would crop out the beer bottle!

What constitutes a good profile portrait could be debated endlessly as the answer is subjective. But I would assert that you want to look professional  (to the extent that it's appropriate to your business), trustworthy, comfortable in your own skin, and approachable. Beyond that you want to exude your own personal style and vibe and create a positive first impression for potential colleagues, clients, and customers. 

Why pay more, or more importantly, why not pay less?

I recall over thirty years ago, I was starting out as a photographer, actually before I even went to photo school and I felt pretty good about my 'eye'. I thought I had pretty good skills from doing workshops, and offered to do free portraits for the budding actors with whom I was taking an acting class. I remember saying with confidence, "I can make anyone look good." Except I couldn't. Most of them turned out O.K. But, there was one guy who had been on a fast and looked kind of ill, with pasty, blotchy skin and had not a great disposition. He and his girlfriend were not impressed with the portrait I did of him and didn't want to pay the fee (which just covered the cost of film, processing and photo paper for the print). What an uncomfortable situation that was.

Thirty years later, hundreds of professional portraits, including presidents of companies and a few celebrities and other notable individuals I look back and think, wow, I knew so little, but that didn't bother anyone until I took a truly sub-standard picture. I said I was a photographer and they believed me, and if it hadn't been for that one guy I would have got through that first professional portrait shooting experience fairly unscathed. However, having been 'scathed' I sure intended never to let that happen again. I honestly didn't know at the time what I could have done to have made that guy look better. (Now we have Photoshop, but that wouldn't have helped his expression.) I didn't do a paid portrait again for a long, long time.

You can pay from very little (as low as $100 or close to) to a lot ($1000 and up) for an individual  portrait these days. So what are you getting for the money? Obviously there are varying costs commensurate with the complexity of a shoot...for example duration and location of the shoot, photo assistants, hair and make-up, wardrobe, etc., but independent of those, why would you pay more?

More story telling: some years ago a client of mine moved from one large corporation to another, so I asked if she'd like me to do executive portraits for her new company. She showed me the work they had been getting from the photographer they usually called. He was clearly using a quantity over quality business model. The clients got several 'retouched' frames from their portrait shoot for (to me) a shockingly low rate. Shocking at least until I saw the pictures. They showed very clearly that there was not a lot of attention to detail happening during the photo sessions, and very little sensitivity regarding what the subjects might think about how they look in a photo. And the retouching was incomplete and mediocre. (Forgive me for sounding harsh.) Basically they were just not good pictures (the client even admitted that the subjects were not all that happy), but until I came along and specifically asked them to switch to me, they were apparently not unhappy enough to change photographers. Why not?

I cannot tell you how many times I have greeted my corporate portrait subject to be told that they have hated their corporate photo forever, are not photogenic, hate having their picture taken, and sometimes feel they have never had a good picture of themselves. For reasons I can easily imagine (super busy schedules, no opportunity to opine on choice of photographer, reluctance to spend more, no time or inclination to reshoot, etc.) they have just been been putting up with a product (or products) they really don't like.

If you are willing to believe the premise that portraiture is the responsibility of the photographer, do you want to trust the results to the cheapest, fastest guy, or to the person who charges more because they take a little more time and bring more to the table? As an analogy, would you choose a hairdresser based on cost alone, or even cost and speed? If part of the reason they were cheaper was that they could do your hair cut in ten minutes would that give you a feeling of trust and confidence that they would do a great job? Or, if you do want to commoditize photography, let's look at shoes. If you are 'dressing for success' you may not need to wear Christian Louboutin shoes to the office, but you're not going to wear the cheapest shoes you can find either. Likely, you will need something in between that looks really good, but is not the most expensive option. So in terms of photography, not an Annie Leibovitz high cost, high production value Vogue-worthy shot, but not a snapshot from a point and shoot, either. 

If your portrait is going to be your representation online, on your website, or in newsletters, internal communications within your company…etc. do you want to know that you are going to look your best or do you want a picture that is not great, and succeeds mostly in that it is identifiable as you?  If that picture is going to be your face to the world for the next (up to) two to three years what's it worth to you to like the picture?  And what do you want it to say, by association, about you…"you're awesome!", or "you're O.K."? What does a bad photo say about the person who has chosen it as his or her avatar? To me it suggests a certain lack of personal awareness, attention to detail, and professionalism.

Some clients have no question at all regarding price. Others who are perhaps just not used to the cost of professional photography have a hard time imagining why they should pay some photographers more than others. Understandable. I get it. And unfortunately, it's really not until they've had the experience of working with a true professional that they 'get it.' Again, these days there are many, many "photographers" to chose from. Interestingly, a colleague pointed out to me recently that it has even become less and less common to hear people differentiate themselves as amateur or pro photographers…everyone, now, is a "photographer". How do you know if a photographer is going to show up with a point and shoot and one light, or no light at all because they 'only use available light' (possibly not a good sign)? If their camera stops working do they have a back-up? If their light stops working do they have a replacement just in case? I've had clients question cost before a shoot, but never after.

Corporate portrait photography is, in my opinion, a highly active process. A photographer who knows what she is doing will take the subject in hand and guide and direct that subject to show up in the portrait as the best visual iteration of him- or herself possible. It is not up to the subject to make this happen. It is up to the photographer. If you are a professional model the photographer is going to expect you to perform accordingly (and how much direction they offer will depend on the shoot), but as someone whose job is not posing for cameras it should be one hundred percent the other way around. If you can buy into this concept then how important is the skill of the photographer and what is that worth to you?

Moment of cold, hard, truth (Kevin O'Leary whose book cover I shot can use this phrase without alienating his audience so I hope I can, too...): I have adjusted my pricing repeatedly in an effort to stay competitive in an increasingly competitive market, but as the market for photography continues in its race to the bottom, there has to be some recognition of what's being sacrificed. I'm not the cheapest and I never will be, because at some point it becomes impossible to claim truthfully to be conducting oneself and producing at a professional level.

A final thought: Good photography (of any subject matter) is an art. And yes, daunting as this may seem, you can't just believe a photographer is going to do a good job because he/she says so. It will serve you to do a few things to make sure you know what you're getting. Remember the old addage: there are three things buyers of services/products typically want: they want what they're buying to be cheap, fast and good, but you can't have all three, so if it's cheap and fast it won't be good, etc. All corporate portraits are not the same. Do you want to risk having to book a redo with another photographer if the first one doesn't work out? I can tell you that thirty years after telling those clients I could make anyone look good, now, I really can, but it took a lot of practice. When you choose a portrait photographer, choose a true professional, who brings talent, a practiced eye, technical knowledge and skill to the process. You'll be able to tell when you look at their website and see samples and testimonials and ask a few questions. And remember to ask whether retouching is included and to what extent. If you hire the right person, not only will you look good if you're the subject, you'll look good to everyone who knows you were the one who hired that photographer. 

If you'd like me to help make you look good e-mail me at kathryn@hollinrake.com.
www.hollinrake.com. 
www.makemepretty.photography

Portrait of a Busy Mother

L-R: Joanna's selfie from home, selfie in the studio, and final studio portrait (same backdrop as the selfie!)

Joanna is a super busy mother of two very active daughters. She takes her job as a stay-at-home mum very seriously and manages to take care of her family in a way I can only dream of doing. Jo used to be a busy professional photographer like me, but unlike me, she didn't use herself as a subject, I think, probably ever. As such, she fits into the category of one of my favourite groups of portrait subjects: people who hate having their pictures taken. Why are they one of my favourites? Because there's nothing more gratifying than making someone who doesn't think they're going to look good look really good, and having that person who is dreading the whole experience tell me they actually had fun, and they love their picture.

Like many people these days Jo had a potential profile picture she was somewhat happy with: she had gotten all dressed up for a special occasion and snapped a selfie in the bathroom mirror. In the spirit of my idea to compare selfies with professional portraits she then did another selfie on set in my studio but using no flash (her phone camera wasn't connected my studio flash/lights). Both pictures reflect some typical issues encountered with cell phone selfie portraits. In the first one, particularly, you can see the distortion resulting from having one's face too close to a wide angle lens. At least in this one there was some light so the camera shake is not too bad, but the second one, shot at a 1/17 of a second shutter speed, is noticeably blurry. In both cases, the backgrounds are  distracting, in the first case because it's just not a pretty background, and in both cases because they're too much in focus. My studio backdrop was designed to be lit properly and thrown out of focus to work. And of course there's the issue of pose and expression, the limitations of trying to control and produce those most effectively while shooting yourself with your phone being obvious.

Joanna had a couple of specific requirements, one of which was not to show her arms. I think this is a pretty typical concern for women over twenty who don't have personal trainers and time to work on their  muscle tone for hours every week. So we had to make sure she chose wardrobe that provided coverage but not bulk. The first two outfits added bulk and weight and just weren't flattering in a photo:

L-R: 1st and 2nd wardrobe options tried vs. a final frame with the "right" wardrobe

A brief note about the background: I am a big fan of a bit of texture that just hints at some kind of place (rather than a plain paper backdrop), so when we don't shoot on location (at an office, in a home, or wherever), we have lots of different ways of creating something unidentifiable, and unobtrusive, but aesthetically pleasing. This background was a combination of a custom designed  banner stand backdrop, a sheer curtain and a glass wall.

Here's what Joanna had to say:

"Just wanted to thank you for the beautiful portrait! My husband and the girls 

love them and so do I. Now I have something to look back on that will remind me 

that once I did look younger!"

And this was before she even saw the retouched shots.

Coming up, a short post about two male clients I helped "look pretty" after they used selfies in their initial website design.

To see my website please click on this link: hollinrake.com.
And e-mail me at kathryn@hollinrake.com

Diane: Professional Portrait in a "Barn"

Diane Before and After Wardrobe, Posing and Retouching

As the date for the official launch of her new business, and accompanying new website approaches, Diane, an equine health professional, has been building a house. So over the past few months while she has been toiling away in dusty work clothes, neglecting her hair and nails (understandably!) and pretty much foregoing wearing any make-up, she has started to forget the lovely face she used to see in the mirror. Furthermore, thanks to being in a somewhat transitory situation for some time, she has not been able to follow her usual diet and has slipped a bit away from her ideal weight. It being a few years since her last professional portrait she was in need of an update that would feature her current look, but she was not feeling beautiful. Her usual boisterous confidence somewhat temporarily compromised she arrived at the studio not totally sure what we would be able to pull off. 

I had thought that the perfect backdrop for Diane's portrait would be a barn wall, since she works with horses, but it wasn't going to work for us to have to actually go to a barn. Fortunately I had, not long ago, repainted one of my hand painted backdrops to look somewhat reminiscent of a post and beam barn wall. Having shot in barns a few times I knew exactly what feel I wanted for the lighting...I wanted to emulate a flare of late day sun coming in from an out-of-frame entrance and reflecting off the warm stall walls. Very soft, warm and flattering.

Not surprisingly the second Diane started putting on her make-up she was well on her way back to confidence. She had brought a selection of tops of the type she might wear on the job the times she isn't required to wear full scrubs. We liked the light blue in theory, for a hit of colour, but decided it was actually kind of distracting 'on film' (again, we're shooting digitally, so really we mean on the computer monitor, but that doesn't sound right!). The brown sleeveless option she brought turned out to interact much more successfully with the tones of her skin, her hair and the background.

Next, the pose. Regardless of one's figure, poses can be very flattering, or not, slimming or really not. And it's not as if the pose needs to be stiff or formal or restricted to one position...it's more a matter of movement within a loose set of parameters that enhance rather than detract from the natural ability of the person to look 'optimal.'

The one additional  adjustment we made to the lighting before shooting the final files was to take some light away from under Diane's chin, which helped create separation between her face and neck. This as well as the pose angled away from the main light served to emphasize and define Diane's jawline.

Final Selected Frame Before and After Retouching

Once we had a bunch of winning frames it was just a matter of choosing a favourite and touching it up. (In fact, I picked one, and Diane chose a couple of others she felt would be appropriate for different pages on her new site.) Retouching needed to be subtle because it would be particularly inappropriate for someone who works with animals, in rural/outdoor environments, and needs clients to trust her completely to appear at all unrealistic or inauthentic in her profile pictures.

So, all I did was:

- close her sexy top a bit. We couldn't get the fabric 'V' to sit straight during shooting so I digitally composited a fix in retouching,

- slenderize her body, and arms ever so slightly. Her torso area showing behind her arm may be cropped out of the final, anyway, but to give her the flexibility of using a less tight crop I just digitally 'repositioned' that area,

- brighten the light side of the face a bit more,

- remove some of the frizz around the edges of her hair. It's hard to do this just the right amount so that it doesn't look fake and 'cut out', but hair frizz and fly aways are distracting in photos and really show up in backlit situations, so I pretty much always advocate tidying up in retouching,

- subtly whiten her already white teeth, particularly in between the teeth where stains can form over time (visible in the high res file),

- subtly whiten eyes and remove visible blood vessels,

- subtly lighten/smoothen under eye areas,

- very subtly smoothen skin, particularly the slightly rough arm skin and neck wrinkles (visible in the high res file) and add subtle highlights onto arms. Importantly, make sure to leave texture in skin,

- emphasize/add to the sunlight 'flaring' in from outside, so the highlights in the hair and on the arm make visual sense.

That's about it! Diane's happy, so I'm happy. Now, onto the other frames she has requested. I can't wait to see how they fit into her new site design!

Back into the Workforce Business Portrait

Tracy "Before" and "After"

Ten years ago Tracy stepped away from her career in finance to dedicate herself to her growing family. Now that the demands on her time are changing with all three kids in school, she is rev'd about getting back into the workforce and relaunching her business self. 

When we're shooting in studio I always suggest clients bring some wardrobe choices, because often what we think looks good in life does not look as good in a photograph for various reasons. Tracy was a rock star in the wardrobe department bringing four jackets, nine tops(!) and a dress, all pressed and on hangers (perfect!). As, again, is often the case, she really wasn't sure what might work best for her portrait, and since she's been out of the business world for a while she had fewer specifically business oriented clothes to choose from than she used to. 

I wasn't sure the leather jacket was the way to go, so we tried three outfit variations, and ultimately decided that the leather jacket really did look most flattering. It also made Tracy feel most like herself. We did change the top underneath, though, to one with less distracting detail. That top was actually a dress which Tracy told me she almost didn't bring figuring she wouldn't need a dress for a portrait shoot. Thank goodness she did. It's good to remember that you can often "cheat" in photography; the same way something looks good in life but not on film, something might look great on film and not work at all in life. Regarding wardrobe, and jewellery, for that matter, if you're not sure, bring it anyway. Always better to have too much to choose from than nothing that really works!

Three wardrobe variations we thought might work, that didn't

While Tracy was focused on bringing wardrobe options to chose from, to her dismay she forgot her tinted moisturizer. She's a minimal make-up kind of person, and she has great skin so it wasn't a disaster, nothing a little retouching couldn't fix, and it was, truly, a little retouching. What else did we do? Tracy was wearing eyeliner but had applied it very subtly, so I just added to it (using her liner which she'd brought with her), to make it darker and thicker. At first she felt it looked a bit heavy, but looking at her photo she agreed it worked really well to emphasize and energize her eyes. The magic of eyeliner!

Tracy had also, the day before the shoot, visited her trusted hair salon Fiorio where stylist Chrissy (her usual stylist Phillipe being away) updated her look for her personal relaunch. Trying out a new stylist right before a photo shoot can be risky, but in this case it worked out really well! As always, there were a few hairs to style back into place once she was seated. Untamable flyaways were retouched out later.

Because I know Tracy and she had time, we played around with the lighting I had set up prior to her arrival just in case it looked better from the opposite side. It didn't, so back it went to the initial set-up. This meant, though, that we shot a bit more than we would usually need to, wrapping up after about 110 frames. 

With regard to the "before" photo at the beginning of this post, a comment: I had thought we were pretty much ready to go but realized something was missing...more accurately, it wasn't that something was missing, it was that there was too much light making the face look kind of flat and washed out. I prefer more modelling on the face (ie. light and shadow to create shape and depth) so I blocked the light reflecting into the right side of Tracy's face (left of photo), and voila.

A note regarding the background: in studio a common choice is between seamless paper (solid colour), or a painted backdrop (if not a more elaborate set). There are lots of very dated looking mottled backgrounds out there...we've all seen them...you know the look: kind of dark and speckled. Even some of those can still work if you light them well and throw them out of focus enough. I do like to have some kind of hint of texture in the backgrounds I use for corporate portraits, so when it's practical I use custom painted backdrops which I paint myself because I have not found many commercially produced textured backgrounds I like.

Finally here, an alternative shot captured just before we wrapped, featuring a slightly brighter expression and less formal and conservative look, with a light filter applied to further brighten and soften:

Now when Tracy's potential new employers see her LinkedIn profile, website, etc., she will have the added advantage of looking (in her profile picture) like the polished, professional, confident, friendly business woman she is.

To get to my website please click here: hollinrake.com.

Personal Branding Portrait of a Real Estate Agent

Our first final shot: frame #89

Real estate agent (specifically, an Ecobroker for Green Real Estate) and actress Judy Coffey is another entrepreneur who sometimes uses her home as an office. Once I'd scouted her (actually authentic converted warehouse) loft condo I knew we had the perfect location for an environmental shoot...really stylishly and contemporarily decorated interior, enough space to move around in and allow me and my camera some distance from the subject (her) so we could use a flattering focal length lens, and west facing facing window with lots of light at the right time of day, which we could use or not depending on what worked. 

Here above is the main shot we were going for. But how did we get to this?

Let me show you where we started:

First outfit we tried, no lights yet

If we were doing a moody personal portrait to put in a scrapbook or personal blog or something we could be almost there, but for a professional, branding image that is going to shout to the world how into, and on top of her professional world Judy is, we had a ways to go. 

First off, the sweater is a bit casual, and beige. We had thought something blue might provide a pleasing pop of colour, but we didn't love the texture of the blue jacket available. We loved the delicate silk fabric in the third top below, but thought it likely wouldn't "read" upscale and professional-agent-appropriate but rather look just too loose and cas.

Five different tops we thought might work

So what did we do? (See pics below) We went back to the sweater one more time with light! Nope. Still not happening. We did really like the fourth blouse but it was looking a bit risque. So we tried it again. It was not going to work if Judy had to hold it shut. So we steamed it and styled it and ta-da! It worked. Then we added a bit more lip colour, which we realized almost instantly was actually too much lip colour, so we took it back down, and we were almost ready to really shoot. 

Back to the sweater, again? No, the blouse, but... Whoa...too much lipstick!

Except that we had not yet finessed the props and greenery to my satisfaction. We turned the lily around and around  trying to get just the right amount of green in the shot but it just wasn't the right shape, so we moved it right out of the shot, and moved in a smaller more delicate leafed plant on a small table just behind the dining table. And then proceeded to move it and turn it and move it and turn it until it was in just the right spot for the crop I had, by this point, decided worked best. Then we just needed to add in something where the lily had been so we took a tall, decorative vase of twigs from the corner of the living room and positioned it there. That fit perfectly and filled in the empty space just enough to add texture without being distracting. 

Jude laughs as we figure out what to do with her hands.

Now it was just a matter of settling on the right props (we didn't like the cordless phone so we switched to a cell), hand position, head position, and eyeline, and then getting the right expression...happy, self-possessed, comfortable and ostensibly spontaneous! In some cases there is lots of flexibility in terms of head position, but that said, there is also, quite often, a limited range of positions within which the person looks the "prettiest". In this case, the lighting was set up to look most flattering when Judy looked well off camera axis, so we could capture a somewhat candid looking "moment" at which she looked up to greet a make believe client. If we'd wanted to photograph her looking at the camera we would have changed the angle of the lighting considerably to contour and flatter her face at that angle.

In any case, by the 89th frame we had it (see the pic at the top of this post)! 

Satisfied with the sitting shot we then moved on to the shot I had actually originally wanted to do first: what I had envisioned as sort of an action shot featuring Jude moving toward her client to greet her and shake her hand. Jude and I both burst out laughing at the first test shot:

Jude as a robot or Michael Jackson

 I hadn't moved the lighting yet, so it was way too dramatic, and Jude looked like she was conjuring Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk. After choosing and testing new wardrobe, relighting, and a few more tests with various props, we tried having her walk towards her imaginary client to offer her a cup of tea. That actually looked pretty good, so we checked and locked camera focus, then did a few speed and position tests to determine how fast she needed to walk so that her motion would "read" without too much blur, and at what point she would be in the middle of the frame, in focus, with her swinging arm in a nice position.

We could have shot looser and followed her with focus as she moved, but we would have run the risk of a bunch of uncontrolled variables compromising the overall quality of the shot, for example the lighting looking less optimal, arm swing looking awkward, or background elements either partially appearing or disappearing or looking misplaced within the frame relative to Jude. The challenge is to get multiple elements right at the same time. One way is to shoot hundreds of frames and search through them hoping for a good one. Another, which I prefer with a shoot like this, is to determine what is going to look best and focus on getting that, while still allowing for small variations that may add that little extra spark of unexpected greatness. Furthermore, this was one of those times when shooting a plate made sense (ie. taking a picture of the scene without Jude in it) which is best done with a camera locked in place, and with focus locked, so that if I needed to retouch something like hair flyaways it would be relatively easy. (There were and it was.)

Frame #109, fourth last frame of the day

By the end of our afternoon shoot, the sunlight we had been hoping for was shining in, gloriously bright and unobstructed. It kind of made us want to shoot a more, but we had what we needed and our time was up! 

Personal Branding Portrait Before and After Retouch

Laurie Before and After Retouch and Compositing

This pair of files is from a Lifestyle/Personal Branding shoot of an independent business owner who works occasionally from a home office. We spent about half a day in total, choosing several different spots in her home/work environment to set up in, and shooting in various outfits, and poses. This particular shot was actually one of the very last and was, in a way, sort of a happy accident, as we had started, and concentrated on shooting from a different angle entirely (for which the set was lit and arranged specifically). I basically grabbed this shot without warning, and it worked, mostly. We captured a spontaneous, energetic, authentically happy, expression, and the lighting, although not exactly what I would have wanted, still worked pretty well from this perspective. But, the resulting shot, which Laurie really liked, lacked compositional balance. Basically the large blank white window area to Laurie's right really compromised the success of the overall image. So it needed to be fixed.

I did not actually love the heavy green curtains as a backdrop, but there was nothing to see through the window as it was mid-winter, the sky was cloudy, the trees had no leaves and the landscape was snow-covered. So first, I decided to add some texture to the curtains. It's a subtle adjustment but made the curtains look a bit less heavy and solid. Then, I took some curtain from the part of the frame that I'd cropped out, and composited it into a new position behind Laurie's right shoulder. I also needed a bit more image area above Laurie's head (than I had shot), so added that in digitally, and added back in some area at Laurie's right elbow which I had cropped out originally, but needed back now as the new curtain area changed the balance.

The image on the right has also been subjected to fairly standard portrait (for me) retouching. It's a bit hard to see here for two reasons: 1) these pictures are pretty small, 2) this flat-ish lighting tends to obscure details, rather than emphasize them. I actually prefer less beauty-ish lighting as I like to see a bit more depth in a portrait. But Laurie does look really pretty! The one retouch I can point out that is clearly visible at this size is the little bulge of flesh above L's right wrist (see above the bracelet in left photo). That's a distraction, and needed to go. 

Bottom line: an almost successful shot that was captured sort of unexpectedly was made successful with a bit of extra work and post-production attention to detail.

Before and After Business Portrait

Ashley Before and After

Ashley is a Toronto-based illustrator who specializes in cut-paper collage. Her illustrations have appeared in a variety of magazines and children’s publications, as well as posters, packaging, clothing lines, animations and set design. When her work is exhibited or published she is often required to provide a contributor profile photo, so she wanted a portrait that would depict her as the professional she is.

In Ashley's case, I didn't have to do a whole lot to "make her pretty" as she is pretty already, and doesn't really struggle with being unphotogenic. However, there are still a few important differences between the before and the after shots.

To begin, we looked at the wardrobe she brought and chose a solid coloured, structured and flattering jacket, which would look good on her, and look appropriately professional for an artist. Then we looked through her jewellery and chose a necklace and earrings pairing that would complete her look in an understated way, and not draw attention away from her face. Ashley arrived with her hair and make-up done as she would normally do them. So once we'd steamed the jacket and she was changed, I asked her to have a seat so I could take her picture. See frame 1 above left. Not bad, really! It's sweet, but it's a little tentative.

So what did we do? 

1) I added a touch of eyeliner, and some lip gloss, which didn't take away from her natural look, just enhanced it, and made her look a little more grown up. (Oh, to have the problem of looking too young! But too youthful a look can be a disadvantage.) We used a bit of hair spray to subtly style her hair. I am not a hair stylist or a make-up artist, but in the absence of professional stylists, I can help. 

2) We changed Ahley's posture and position to give some energy, confidence and shape to her body.

3) Then we worked together to elicit a confident, friendly, approachable expression.

4) Once we selected the winning final shot, I got to work retouching. What was needed was going to be subtle but important: a. hair: shape, hair on shoulder, fly aways, and split ends that catch highlights, b. lapel which was sort of sticking up in the selected frame because of a stubborn crease, c. cleaning up of eyes, and lightening under eyes, d. teeth (just a very slight whitening), e. skin: winter wreaks havoc on delicate facial skin making it dry and less smooth than it would be under ideal circumstances, and f. crop (I cropped both the before and after so they'd look more similar as possible for comparison purposes). 

Now Ashley has a strong, professional looking headshot.

I want to finish off here by sharing one of the shots we got at the very end of the shoot.

 
After the more formal portrait, we did a few looser, more casual portraits, which in Ashley's case would also be very appropriate for her personal profile pic. By the time we got to these, Ashley had changed into more casual wardrobe and she was able to be even more relaxed in front of the camera; her energy and down to earth personality really shine through. I look at these pics and I feel her smile...it's contagious...and ideally that's the effect these shots will have on all the viewer's of her portrait.

Makemepretty.photography

My new business card art featuring over 90 tiny portraits, although you can't actually see all of them :)

Welcome to my new blog!

After over twenty years of working with clients to represent their brands with photography, I have finally been able to distill my own brand into a distinct and resonant phrase (O.K. two phrases, but they are slight variations on a clear theme)! I'm so happy!

I am now the proud and excited owner of Makeitpretty.photography and Makemepretty.photography.

As I was thinking back to what it was that drew me to photography in the first place, and what has kept me interested all these years, I realized that for me, it's pretty simple…I like to make things and people, "look pretty". It's a simplification. But it's basically true. Photography for me was never about capturing reality. It was a way of taking a subject and making it look better.

There are all kinds of ways to expand and elaborate upon on the idea of taking a mundane or, in some cases, not very photogenic subject, be it an object or a person, or a dog, or an insect, and working with lighting, props, backgrounds, sets etc., etc. to bring out their texture, beauty, character, colour, etc., but it all comes down to what I think my clients really want from me. And that is, to "make it (them) look pretty", or "make me (her,him,them) look pretty."

My main website is still at hollinrake.com.
It can also be accessed using  kathrynhollinrake.com
as well as makemepretty.photography
and makeitpretty.photography

I've done a slight reorg. on it, so now the categories are:

PORTFOLIOS
ABOUT
ABOUT (really)
CORPORATE PHTGY
    Corp Intro
    Corp p.2
    Corp p.3
    Corp p.4
    Testimonials
BLOG
Makemepretty BL (link to this blog)
LINKS (this is new)
CONTACT

Here on my makemepretty blog I'll concentrate on the theme of making people look pretty. And yes, this can apply to women or men (guys…just substitute "handsome" or "gorgeous" for "pretty"…for simplicity's sake I had to pick one word...I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and trusting you get it!).

And I'm just going to throw this out there…I'm going to be looking for some willing subjects for before and afters to post here. This means I'll give you an unbeatable deal on a portrait in return for being able to show the world what you looked like before and after finessing/retouching. Please e-mail me at kathryn@hollinrake.com or call me at 416 465-8280 if you would like to participate.

Thanks for reading and I hope you'll revisit!

Coming soon!

Hi there! Welcome to my new blog featuring news, views, information about, and examples of my corporate and lifestyle branding portraiture. Thanks for your patience while I update my website and get this blog going. Please feel free to e-mail me if you'd like to me notify you when my first post goes live. 

In the meantime, please contact me by phone or e-mail for info, availability and pricing.

Thanks so much for visiting!

Kathryn