Lauren had wanted to work with me for many years but it was never the right time until recently when she needed an updated headshot for her business and LinkedIn pages. But as you can see from the image above, this session became much more than a headshot session.
It had been years since Lauren found my work and wanted to work with me. I'll occasionally receive an email with someone who really digs my style and wants to hire me but other things get in the way and time moves on and they will put me on their "to do" list.
Years after Lauren had done that, she suddenly found she needed an updated headshot, and she remembered that I was still in Nashua and it was time!
When she came into the studio I was knocked over by her hair - this gorgeous lion's mane of color and body. It was gorgeous!
We started the session and we got some headshots on white:
After a few wardrobe changes and knowing that we had nailed the images on white, I kept looking at her hair and how glorious it was, and I asked if I could do a quick background switch so I could play around a bit.
A little while ago I was obsessing over those really expensive custom painted backdrops that photographer Annie Leibovitz uses and I picked this, *ahem*, "affordable" alternative that came in the form of this jerzee-style sweatshirt fabric that can stretch a bit and has "painted style" pattern printed on the backdrop. It's kinda cheesy but it didn't cost a whole lot, so I picked it up hoping that whatever lobe in my brain that wouldn't stop thinking about those really expensive backdrops would shut the hell up now that I had this knock-off imitation painted backdrop thing. It did. Mostly.
I hung it on a backdrop stand and then brought my black backdrop paper down behind it to create a double-layer of backdrop (plus the imitation knock-off isn't very large, so I wanted to make sure I covered up the back of the studio), and I had Lauren stand in front if it.
It looked good. The knock-off backdrop had just enough detail and pattern that it added something to the image. It wasn't solid black. It wasn't solid grey. It wasn't solid white. It just had a little texture to the background.
Lauren has this really bold attitude and she was a total rock star while during out session, so I wanted to treat her like a rock star, and I so I pulled back my composition to include all the "set up" stuff. It started to feel like a Rolling Stone session. I was really digging it.
I really loved what I was looking at, and Lauren was really giving off a total rock star attitude.
I did another quick lighting change and had her turn 90 degrees and face the light and suddenly she literally turned into a lioness!
I had a really excellent time making portraits with Lauren, and she was extremely happy with everything that we made. I loved the confidence she was projecting during the whole session, and I'm really looking forward to working with her again.
Thanks Lauren! Keep rocking!