Just before my brother came down from CT to celebrate my mother's birthday, he mentioned he needed a bw headshot for his company website. I told him I would take a stab at it. Keep in mind I do not have any lighting equipment, backdrops or anything one might need in a studio. I have a nice camera and a great 35mm Sigma lens.
I decided we should use natural light inside. I had him in front of a window that had a good amount of light coming through the blinds. I then brought down a white sheet from upstairs and had my daughter and niece hold it behind his head as tight as possible to avoid the appearance of wrinkles. No go; daughter went to iron a section (not great, but an improvement). They tried again, stretching the fabric as smooth as possible while my brother sat in a chair and was patient with all my instruction about moving his head a certain way or smiling. Everyone was making fun of us or him or anyone--it was pretty funny! He also borrowed my husband's clothes and there is a binder clip right at the back of his neck making the color stand up in the front better. HA!
Everyone liked this shot--we had about 6 or so we could work with, but I went to editing this. FYI, I decided to do it in Mono as a jpg file while I shot (vs. RAW) because he knew it was going to be a BW headshot.
I ended up editing mostly in LR5 (I'm going to post a before/after to show the difference ). Then I took it into Color Efex (has much more filters than Silver, FYI) to do some final tweaks!
I think it looks good. Here's hoping it will work for his company.
