Shooting a headshot in a hotel room is about having a compact system. Over Christmas, we were in Phenix, Alabama, and my daughter needed a new headshot. Her hair color had changed, so I brought this small kit to get her some up-to-date photos.

I had two Flashpoint XPlor 600 HSS TTL lights that I controlled from my camera using the GODOX X1-N transmitter.

The main light is used as a butterfly light using a beauty dish. I am using the Godox Beauty Dish Reflector (White, 16.5″), which has a Bowens mount that works on the Flashpoint 600 lights.

As you can see, I am also using one more Flashpoint light behind the subject. I forgot my 30º Grid, so I improvised and put a box around the 7″ reflector to act as barn doors. This kept the light off the background and created a lens flair with my lens.

I use the Lastolite Triflector MKII Frame + Silver/White Panels under the model’s face and on the sides to kick light back into her face.

For the background, I always carry a Savage Collapsible Stand Kit (60 x 72″, Black/White).

I prefer to shoot with the flashes in manual mode. I started with the main light at 1/128th power. And the same with the backlight. This had me shooting on the Nikon Z6 with the 85.0 mm f/1.8, at ISO 100, 1/800, ƒ/1.8.

I got this reading using my ExpoDisc. I hold this over the 85mm lens while facing the light with the beauty dish. I am holding the camera right where the model’s face will be. I take exposures and adjust the exposure using the histogram until I have a spike in the middle of the histogram.

Then I use the same ExpoDisc and do a custom white balance.

After shooting, I changed the depth-of-field to a little more depth. So I went from ƒ/1.8 to ƒ/4. I then just raised the power of the flashes by approximately two stops. So, now the main light is 1/32 power and did the same for the background.

I shot a few shots using this setup.

There is no light but the fall off from the main light hitting the white background. This gives you a grey look. If you want it black, turn around the background and use the black side.

If you want it white, light the white side with at least the same amount of light hitting the subject. However, I always recommend getting a pure white; give it one stop more.

Write me if you want to know anything about this setup that I didn’t answer in the blog.

Maybe you have swabbed your cheek and gotten your DNA profile revealing your ancestors as I have. My wife and I did the FamilyTreeDNA.

You can see the family trees of those who have chosen to share that are related. Ancestory.com promotes its product using photos like this ad here:

I have worked out a great workflow that works for me and my clients when I do photo shoots. However, when the photos are older and need to be cataloged, well that is what I am writing about today.

Workflow for Older or Existing Photos

First, you need to digitize all these images. Earlier, I wrote about copying images with my Nikon Z6 on my blog. To digitize slides, I wrote about that process here.

I want to pick up those photos that are digitized. I have been doing a few archiving projects and now have a pretty good process.

The first thing I am doing is ingesting all the images into Adobe Lightroom Classic. Once ingested, I use the shortcut in the Library Module “O.”

Lightroom will now look for people’s faces. All of them will be unnamed, and then you assign a name. Just click below the photo and write the name in.

You can then right-click and ask it to find similar faces. I select all those that are the same person and type the name in. Hold the Command key ⌘, click on all the photos, and then only have to do this once.

How many photos you imported and how many faces are in those photos will impact how long it takes to find all the pictures. I have been importing about 3,000 images at a time, and it takes a good hour or so to see all the faces.

Artificial Intelligence is great for a few reasons. First, if someone is looking for a photo of someone, most likely they want a photo where you can see them. AI helps you by only finding recognizable faces. Second, it is fast.

When you finish you can export all the images, putting their names in keywords and the people field. You can also write the metadata to the image. I do this since I am working primarily with JPEGs since they are older photos rather than RAW images. Go to >Metadata>Save Metadata To File, or you can use the shortcut ⌘S.

When Face Recognition was first introduced with Lightroom 6, I wrote a blog on it here.

Second I leave Lightroom and go to Photo Mechanic Plus.

Here I have a few shortcuts to help with speeding up Metadata.

Using the “Variables,” I put those into the caption field. So what I am doing is moving the names created in Lightroom from the “Keyword” field to the “Description/Caption” field. I also carry the location information.

With one client I also use {filenamebase} and {folderpath} variables. They had already tried to help in finding their photos by creating a folder system and filenames that helped with finding photos.

Their system worked like walking into a library, walking to a specific section, and pulling a book because you know how the system was set up. However, if you are as old as I am, you may remember going to the library and teaching you how to use the card catalog system.

I am taking that filing system and embedding it into each photo. This way, if you search for a topic that was a folder, it will find all those photos. You can then narrow the search with more words.

Third I will now add keywords to every photo. I use a “Structured Keyword List.”

If you create a taxonomy of keywords using the form of this outline about without the numbering, this can be used in what Photo Mechanic refers to as a “Structured Keyword.” It will look like this below, minus the bullet points.

• North America
  • United States
    • Alabama
  • Mexico
  • Canada

You can use Microsoft Excel and create your list as well. A column and indent would be the B column and so on. If you save it as a TXT, it can be used as a Structured Keyword list.

Click on the drop-down menu on the right of keywords in the IPTC screen. Pick the Structured Keywords.

This is the default that comes with Photo Mechanic. I have written my own for different clients.

This lets you quickly add keywords to a photo.

When you have done this just once, the keywords will be under the Structured Keywords, so you don’t have to recreate it if you want to use the same or another one you created. It keeps those as another shortcut.

My last tip is that you can simultaneously apply any of these to multiple images.

Select all the images or select CMD+I to bring up the IPTC. You change anything in this and then tell it to apply to your selection.

You can do the same thing by selecting images and CMD+M to rename all the photos you have chosen.

On average going one image at a time, it can take about 5 minutes for an idea to write a caption telling us the Who, What, Where, When & How, as well as adding Keywords. But using code replacement, structured keywords, and applying those to multiples when you can–will save you an incredible amount of time.

The last tip. Do this enough, and your speed will increase over time.

Child is fascinated by my camera and watched me as I was working at the Hôpital Baptiste Biblique in Tsiko, Togo, West Africa. [NIKON Z 6, 24.0-105.0 mm f/4.0, Mode = Aperture Priority, ISO 1400, 1/200, ƒ/4, (35mm = 105)]

“You’ll never look at other people in quite the same way again. Emotions Revealed is a tour de force.”

– Malcolm Gladwell

Paul Ekman (born February 15, 1934) is an American psychologist who is a pioneer in studying emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He has created an “atlas of emotions” with more than ten thousand facial expressions and has gained a reputation as “the best human lie detector in the world”.

If you are a professional communicator and haven’t studied body language, I believe Emotions Revealed is a great place to learn about it. Specifically, Ekman explores the facial expressions of people around the world.

Even in the book’s preface, Ekman warns that keen observation alone needs to be verified.

“… carefully using the information you acquire about how others are feeling. Sometimes that means asking the person about the emotion you have spotted, acknowledging how they are feeling, or re-calibrating your reactions in light of what you have recognized.”

– Paul Ekman

If you are a professional communicator and haven’t read Ekman’s work, you are missing out on what all research points to about human communication.

Dr. Mehrabian, in the 1960s, devised a formula to describe what the mind determines to mean. He concluded that the interpretation of a message is 7 percent verbal, 38 percent vocal, and 55 percent visual. The conclusion was that 93 percent of communication is “nonverbal” in nature.

It would be almost 40 years before his research on Ekman helped us to understand some of that Visual Communication.

One of the best parts of the book is the photographic examples he uses throughout the book.

One of the examples is Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. The photo is in the book. He uses a few photojournalism moments in history to teach us about-face expressions.

Ekman is trying to teach us a new kind of awareness that he calls attentiveness. I believe if you can master the skills of recognizing expressions, you can learn to anticipate them.

If you can anticipate these expressions, you can capture them with a camera and use them to tell the story.

If you react with your camera, very rarely will you capture the tell-tale signs of the visual?

The work of Ekman was used in the TV Series Lie To Me.

Ocean Isle Peer on early morning walk on the beach in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina. [NIKON Z 6, VR Zoom 24-105mm f/4G IF-ED, Mode = Aperture Priority, ISO 360, 1/250, ƒ/16, (35mm = 24)]

If you were to look at the EXIF data on all your photos, would most of them be wide open or closed down aperture?

There is a perfect chance you fall into one of two camps.

BOKEH

If this word is part of your vocabulary and what you talk about when it comes to photography, you most likely own some pretty expensive lenses with an aperture of ƒ/1.4.

You may be just like me when I love to isolate the subject and simplify the composition.

Group ƒ/64

There was a group of photographers that shot mainly in large format and would close down the aperture to get everything they could sharp as possible.

In 1930 Willard Van Dyke and, Ansel Adams & Edward Weston formed the Group ƒ/64. They shared a standard photographic style characterized by sharp, focused, and carefully framed images seen from a mainly Western (U.S.) viewpoint. In part, they formed in opposition to the pictorialist photographic style that had dominated much of the early 20th century. Still, they wanted to promote a new modernist aesthetic based on precisely exposed images of natural forms and found objects.

If you were part of the ƒ/64 style, you had to pay attention to everything in the frame, which if you are familiar with Ansel Adams and Edward Weston’s work, you know they paid incredible attention to detail.

Form or Function?

Form follows function is a principle associated with late 19th and early 20th-century architecture and industrial design in general, meaning the shape of a building or object should primarily relate to its intended function or purpose.

Here are some ideas where Form is more important than Function:

1. Wood Floors in Bathrooms
2. Carpet in Bathrooms
3. Door-less Shower Enclosure

Sometimes, like anything in life, one side will win a bit more over the other. When you’re faced with any situation, I recommend you do what I do: do your best to see both sides of the story and then chart the best path forward for whatever situation you’re in. 

By the way, here is a sampling of images in Lightroom and their aperture for me.

ƒ/1.4	10653
ƒ/2.8	23389
ƒ/5.6	94475
ƒ/8	32147
ƒ/16	3346

When I started shooting photos for a newspaper in 1982, I often shot wide open to try to shoot available light with Black & White Kodak Tri-X film shot at ISO 1600. That was the high ISO available for most of my first twenty years of shooting film. They did make a new film that went to 3200. So, you shot wide open to get a photo.

BOKEH wasn’t even talked about in my circles until we started shooting digital, and the ISO 12800 or faster was a reality.

ƒ/64 Group wasn’t photographing people most of the time so that they could shoot long exposures on tripods.

When ISO 12800 was possible for me on my Nikon D3, I, for the first time, realized I could close down the aperture inside for the first time shooting with available light. This changed the possibilities.

You Stuck In A Rut?

Most likely, in photography, you are stuck in a rut. Most of my friends are due to how you learn to shoot. One of my friends teaches people to look for the moment. To do this, he tells people just put the aperture on ƒ/2.8 and look for moments.

When I started, I shot wide open because I didn’t have much choice, but after twenty years of programming, I found it hard to shoot other than wide empty inside.

Now when I am outside, I might shoot at ƒ/5.6 to be sure things are focused. This is true when I shoot sports. I don’t want the ball and the face out of focus.

If you started with Digital

Now, if you started shooting with digital, there is a perfect chance that Form was more critical than Function. You read all those articles about BOKEH and fell in love with the look. That is where Form is more vital than Function.

The sad thing is that even Photojournalists and Communication photographers who should be more about Form following Function will find that they want a strong image more than just a storytelling image.

Often I will shoot what I call a beauty shot, and while it is usually a strong visual, the story isn’t being told with the photo. I am using it to hook you to make you read the caption that will pull you into the picture.

These examples of my work are just about how cool something looks.

Compare that to where I want to include everything I can in the frame to help tell the story. This is where Form follows Function.

If you haven’t thought about it, you are most likely stuck in a rut.

Maybe you remember “The Kodak Carousel” and how you would take 35mm Slide Transparencies and project these onto a screen.

Since I can remember, until around 2002, all the photography workshops used these, and sometimes many of them synced together with a soundtrack to tell stories.

I remember arriving early to see so often the photographer in the back of the room for the event with a stack of slides, just putting them on the carousel for later projects. Every time I saw this, I knew the presentation would be lacking. They hadn’t put any time into their preparation.

Many photographers could still impress with their images, but they didn’t have a well-thought-out presentation.

One of the best-prepared speakers I have heard in the past year was Darrell Goemaat at the FOCUS Zoom meetings I hold weekly with a group of communicators from all over the world.

The key to the success of his presentation was putting in the time to come up with points that all worked to communicate a purpose for his presentation.

For years I have been to meeting after meeting like this one for the Atlanta ASMP chapter, and the main topic is usually business practices.

I have written extensively on the subject and realize that all this talk is to help the artist and not the public. The public doesn’t care anymore about how much it costs you to take photos or a video than they do about how the sausage is made. If the quality is excellent and the service then they buy it. They even become repeat customers.

Almost everything I see on justifying pricing has more to do with educating a skilled artisan but no business sense.

There is always someone cheaper

However, one thing in business that many misses is that some intentionally price their products as high as possible.

The goal is to create the perception that the products must have a higher value than competing products because the prices are higher.

You may think that is wrong, yet on the flip side, when you price low, you diminish the value of your work just as much.

I am a strong proponent of premium pricing for service-based business owners. I think it is better for you as the business owner, and I know it allows you to provide the best possible service to your clients.

You need to understand not just your spreadsheets of costs and time but the psychology of buying.

No matter what you are selling, buying is an emotional decision.

As the service provider, you will make a much better living doing your best for your customer and giving them the best service and product.

When you do this, you must learn to name your products correctly to communicate their value. Just as a writer of good fiction picks the names of their characters, you should spend as much time with the name of your product.

Business is more than knowing the “Cost of Doing Business.” It is the art and psychology of selling.

Now the most significant flaw to this plan is if your work is the same as others, then you will appear to be a commodity, and then it is a race to the bottom for pricing.

Learn to be a craftsman of your trade. Learn to be a “service provider” who thinks of everything for your customer.

Go the extra mile

If your product looks the same and your attitude is the same as others, you will struggle for the rest of your life.