Congrats on booking in for your studio session! It’s gonna be great!! I’ve got a few tips to make sure your session is the best it can be.
For headshots:
The day before – Stay hydrated! Drinking water helps keep your skin nice and your eyes clear. Get a good sleep the night before too – it really makes a difference to how you look and how you feel.
Makeup – If you plan on wearing makeup, generally for headshots I suggest a light touch. You’re going for more of a “afternoon gathering with wine and cheese” rather than a “massive night out with shots and a kebab”. Avoid foundation with a built-in sunscreen; sometimes that gives some funky results under lights. Bring makeup for touch-ups. If you would like me to arrange a makeup artist for your session, we can help, but let me know well ahead of time.
Hair – Definitely make sure your hair is tidy. If you want to have it cut/styled beforehand, great! I recommend against a big change in your hair just for headshots; if you’re used to longer hair and you cut it short for headshots, you might still be adjusting to it, and that might put you off of your ace-headshot game. Bring a hairbrush and any hair products if you anticipate wanting to fix up your hair.
Shaven/unshaven – For the guys, if you want to arrive unshaven and then have a quick shave halfway through, so we get a variety of looks, that’s totally cool.
Clothes – Bring a couple of tops – at least one white/light, one black, a couple of deep colours, and then anything you love and feel comfortable in. Colour is very very ok!! If you have a favourite coloured top that brings out the colour of your eyes, that’s even better. I lean towards darker richer colours – navy/blue, olive green, wine/maroon, purple, leather, and I’ll shoot those on a darker background.Avoid really strong patterns and text, they tend to grab your eye, and the only thing you want people to look at in your shot is YOU. And make sure your tops are ironed, unless you really want that wrinkly look.
Jackets – If you have a jacket or two that you like, bring them along. Leather jackets always look pretty fantastic if you have one that you love.
If we’ve discussed doing 3/4 or full-length shots, bring a couple of ensembles that you’d like to try, including shoes.
Glasses – If you want your headshots without glasses, but you wear some to your session (either regular glasses or sunglasses), you’ll want to give yourself a little time to recover from the little indents your glasses made on the bridge of your nose while you were wearing them. If you are wearing glasses for your shots, that’s ok too – we’ll choose lighting patterns and use a few tricks to minimise reflections.
Look like you!! This is maybe the most important thing – when you show up for a casting, you want to look like your photo.
For non-headshots:
Concept shoots – For planned style shoots (eg modelling sessions, dance sessions, comedy festival sessions, theatre advertising sessions) we will discuss the setup beforehand. It’s really important that we have a shared understanding of the intent of your imagery – how they will be used, what is important to you, how they should look, how they should impact the viewer. That will drive decisions on how to compose, light, style and pose the shoot.
Clothes, hair, makeup – Leading up to the shoot we’ll collaborate on how to style yourself to best fit the needs of the shoot. Many shoots are different, and some require specific styling or props.
Where should you go?
Most of the time we photograph at the beautiful Spine Street Studios. There’s plenty of parking, change rooms, makeup stations, and general excellentness. It’s at 22 Spine Street, Sumner; look for the Little Pieces Photography building. We shoot in Studio 4. To find the studio, keep the Little Pieces Photography building on your left, and head about halfway down the laneway until you see the GIANT door with a 4 on it. Just past that is a human-sized door. Knock three times and say “I AM THE LIZARD QUEEN” loudly and you may enter. (I mean, you can do that if you want, and it’s fun when people do, but a solid knocking will do the job.) Generally if you’re early, I may be shooting with a client, so be patient and try again 🙂
On the day we’ll make choices about lighting and backgrounds so that the lighting, background, clothes, and your face all work in concert for the best outcome. I shoot with a monitor, which means we can review images during the shoot on a tablet or computer screen and see how everything is going.
If you have any questions or concerns on the day, give me a call on 0413 300 020! I may be with a client so I may take some time to get back to you!
