Videos

Matt Spaugh shoots about 400 school headshots alone over three days, stressing organisation: a spreadsheet of names and ID numbers, classes arriving alphabetically, and a school-provided assistant who feeds him numbers and satisfies his never-alone-with-students contract. Settings are f/5.6 and 1/200, with a Godox AD200 in a 43-inch softbox.

Jay P. Morgan shoots three corporate headshot looks in half an hour: a softbox key and gridded rim light against white flagged to grey, a black reflector cover for a dark background, and environmental portraits by the office windows with a strobe outside, all on an 85mm lens.

Mike Browne photographs model Abbie at her house to show low-tech headshots without studio lighting, warning against dappled sun and cluttered backgrounds. He checks hair and make-up, finds backlit and shaded spots in the garden with a reflector, then moves to the kitchen, where blinds and windows give wraparound light.

Pye Jirsa builds a one-light headshot with a Profoto A1 on a MagMod cold shoe and an umbrella, using an 85mm or longer lens. He kills ambient at f/5.6, ISO 200 and 1/200, places the flash above the face at 45 degrees for butterfly lighting, adjusting height for catchlights.

Peter Hurley visits Chicago headshot photographer Mike Sansone, who moved from theatre school, Papa John's and school-bus driving to full-time headshots after finding Hurley's jawline tutorial. Sansone explains the email workflow behind his bookings: follow-ups with headshot tips, invoicing and scheduling sequences, and requests for Google and Yelp reviews.

Peter Hurley's Depth of Field 2019 talk traces his path from a natural-light apartment to a Manhattan studio, coaching site and speaking career, urging photographers to charge and build multiple income streams. He rates images by lookability, stresses consistency and shows a trade-show portrait lit with Westcott LEDs.

Peter Hurley works with Marina on what he calls the final ingredient of portraiture: direction. With gear, settings and lights locked down and repeatable, he concentrates on connection, using his hook-in-the-head, lasso-on-the-collarbones and string-to-the-lens cues to bring the jaw forward, sending arms down out of frame and avoiding over-tilting.

Peter Hurley runs through five headshot essentials with model Johanna: forehead out and chin down for the jawline, three angles to find the best side, a slight squinch for confidence, a hint of a smile rather than a forced grin for approachability, and a camera slightly below eye level.

Anton Nordstrand spends over an hour approaching strangers on Swedish streets and asking to photograph them, filmed from a first-person point of view so each approach, conversation and quick portrait plays out in real time. The long format shows refusals and acceptances, giving a realistic picture of street portraiture.

Andrew Boey photographs singer Vanessa Syt in an indoor urban setting, showing his mistakes before fixing them: switching white balance to tungsten and adjusting the amber-blue-green-magenta shift, balancing colour with an on-camera flash in manual, posing against repeating patterns beside an escalator, then moving to off-camera flash.