First Paid Portrait Shoot Tomorrow...do & don'ts please

I'm doing my first paid "Business" shoot tomorrow. My buddy who's a Graphic Designer got me a gig doing employee headshots for a Golf Club he's doing a project for. It's short notice, but I took it.

There are 10 employees and he wants me to shoot headhsots for their catalogue. It's nothing dramatic or off the wall. Straight shots w/ white background.

Here is my plan.

Background stand w/ white seamless paper

(1) AB800 Off Camera Right 45 degrees(roughly)

42" Silver/White reflector Camera left on boom as fill/hair light

580EX 1/4 power behind subject to light background (I'll use the wide reflector pulled down and stofen bounce to further diffuse light).

580EXII on camera to trigger 580. (Not sure if I'll use the flash or not...maybe 1/16-32 to give very light xtra fill)

Canon 30D w/ 24-105L set to f/8 & 1/125, ISO 100 60mm-90mm (crop factor will make it 85+) Are these good settings

I have a 70-200, but don't know if I should bust it out as it may be too small a place

Am I well prepared?


These are examples of a practice shot I did with this set-up minus the reflector... No PP done

#1

check out this thread. I'm not sure what style of pics you're going for, but either way there are some good tips here
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=460599

As far as posing goes I think the biggest thing is don't have them straight on to the camera. Turn their body to the said and then have them turn their head toward you..

If they are wearing glasses have them tilt their head down just a tad to get rid of the glare if there is one.. The thread that jb said is wonderful..

Good luck, I look forward to seeing some of your photo's.

The shoot went pretty well. I wasn't too nervous and had some nice people to direct. The designer also helped in posing the people to what he wanted. Here is one of the better shots...

#1

It looks like you got some really good stuff. Nice work, I really like the lighting on the last two.

DO: a good job.

DON'T: suck.


Oops. I'm too late.

They look a little deep in the shadows on the left side. A reflector (or moving it closer if you did use one) would have helped there. You can bring 'em up with curves though.

Thanks guys.

The designer did the conversion and deepened the shadows. He says it will flow with his presentation. I used a reflector Camera Left pretty close and metered @ 5.6 & Main @ 8.

The asked me to go back next week and shoot another branch. Maybe it can't suck that bad...

JA

Good on ya! It's always about the client, not random POTNers.

Yeah...but POTNers ideas and comments always help....at least me anyway!