Cinematic Headshots

As I do more filming, I’m progressively more aware of the similarities and contrasts between photography and videography. 

I previously only used strobe lighting (mostly Godox speedlights) for headshots but now the continuous lighting options are much more affordable and flexible. Apurture and Nanlite and even Smallrig have some great solutions in monolights, tubes and LED panels. I want to develop a continuous lighting setup that can be easily adapted between video interviews and corporate headshots, with all the advantages of being able to see how the light is working on each individual and being able to immediately see the results of small adjustments. Strobes will always have the one advantage in photography of being able to use shutter speed to control the balance between ambient and light from the flash. (Zack Arias has some good videos on this). For me though, a continuous lighting setup is the way to go.

In another example of videography influencing photography, I’ve been exploring the idea of a cinematic headshot. Many headshots now are moving away from the studio look for a more natural, ‘real-world’ look, with a little of the environment included. So why not give that a little of the feel of cinema. There’s one obvious problem, that cinema is usually in a wide aspect ratio which isn’t ideal for a LinkedIn profile image. For some websites though a wide bio image might work well, and ‘cinematic’ doesn’t have to mean wide anyway.