This morning’s job was for me to take a new headshot of myself. A recent headshot is something I don’t have because I absolutely hate getting my picture taken. If you’ve ever seen my class photos from grade school you would totally understand why. Trust me, it’s not pretty.

But it had to be done fast. So I setup a studio in my living room with a couple of flashes, and a beauty dish and proceeded to make some of the most awkward faces known to man, in an attempt to look natural for the camera, while firing the camera with a wireless trigger on a two second timer, and trying to pretend that I didn’t know when the shutter was going to open. I got some pretty interesting shots as a result, even one frame mid-sneeze.

After several shirt changes (no need for pants in my own home studio!), a lot of awkward “smiles” and almost forgetting to put my son on the bus, I managed to come up with something usable… I think. I’m happy with the lighting at least :-).

Speaking of lighting, as I mentioned I used two lights for this shot. There was one pointed at the grey wall behind me, which was on a high enough power to create a white background,. The second was in a home made beauty dish (made from a flower planter!) just overhead. Oh, and there was also the light coming in from the window as a third light source. No need for a fancy studio or backdrops, and this can be setup just about anywhere.