Shampooey Goodness

You have heard me talk about this many times. Without “shampooey goodness”, a standard executive portrait can look a little lifeless. This is straight out of the camera (“SOOC”) from yesterday’s executive headshots session in Toronto:

Add a hair/rim light and it becomes much more lively:

In these portraits, the main (“key”) light is on our right:

Fill light and hair light are on our left:

Now, it is important how you add that light. Very important. Aim it a few millimetres too far over and you get much spill onto the cheeks, as  you see in this test shot of my assistant:

For reasons of skin smoothness, I generally prefer to keep it on the hair:

That aiming is best done by an assistant, who fires the flash by means of the test button to see where the light hits the head.

And one more thing: when someone has no hair, you call it a “rim light”!

 

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