Corporate Headshot

As well as photographing Actors, i am also called upon to produce Corporate Headshots.
Above is Sir Ian McGeechin OBE, who at the time was ex Director of Rugby for the London Wasps and a very well known figure in the Rugby world.

He was making an inspiring speech to businessmen on behalf of Archer Mathieson at a very early breakfast event at Twickenham Rugby Club, i got there at 7am to set up lighting for his speech and to take some general images of the day.
I wanted to get a picture of Sir Ian with the company logo to tie them together visually so straight after the speech i moved one of the banners away from the stage, put a seat near it, moved the two flashes in position, took some test images, and.........................waited.

Everybody wanted to speak to Sir Ian after his rousing speech so i couldn't get near him for 5 minutes, but i knew they would want this image so i managed to get through the scrum (rugby joke!) and asked him if i could have 5 minutes of his time?
He was very happy to have his photograph taken so i spent a couple of minutes composing images until i had a few variations.

Lighting details are-one bare flash back camera left, one flash in a shoot through umbrella camera right front.

He was a very charming and friendly chap who knew the power of a good photograph!
Later we went into the corridors with employees of Archer Maithieson for some more images with some of the staues of rugby player to keep the theme of rugby in the images.

light set up in the dark and final image

Above is Scott, you can read about him on the previous post.
This top image is a quick illustration of the lighting setup for the final result of the image bellow.
As you can see, one flash on the gates and one flash in a grid onto Scotts' face with a very slow shutter speed to get the fading evening light. The flash on the gates also gives a rim light on Scott's face camera left which is handy as i didn't have a lot of time to break out a third flash as the sun had allready gone down and it was getting very dark, in fact we took the last shot in total darkness!.
These gates are one of my favourite locations, they are at the bottom of the 'Old Mile straight' at Ascot Racecourse-right next to the road with plenty of parking in a side road nearby.
As with many locations it's best not to use them too frequently as it's not too good to see them in every shoot, iv'e started taking images on my IPhone of locations that can be used in the future so i have a small library to choose from.
As for the images from this day, i supplied him with colour and a few black and white ones for choice