Political Portraits: Corporate Head Shots with Contextual Cowbell

I approach campaign portraits a bit like corporate head shots. After all, the subject is in a great job and he happens to want to keep it. The purpose is a bit more specific, however, so the primary difference for me is context or, more simply put, backgrounds. We wanted to show Todd Gloria in real backgrounds in the actual San Diego community he serves and in the context of issues that he cares about.

As a photographer, if I was doing a more simple corporate head shot, I’d be likely looking for the sweet lighting first and then the background second. Open shade with a nice lighting direction and a nice front bounce like the photo above. Something not too harsh on the skin tones (definitely not direct sun) but also with a snappy bounce from in front of subject that can provide a little spark in the eye. I also like the shadows to have a somewhat sideways direction if possible. A clear direction. Sometimes I’ll have to add or subtract light myself to achieve this and sometimes it just exists in the space and nature makes my life easy. I use the term “nature” loosely. Sometimes its the sun bouncing off a building, walkway or car, sending back a stronger fleet of photons than just the diffused sun would. One learns to look for these light qualities with years of shooting. They can be elusive. I don’t claim to always be successful with it but I do my best.

For indoor shots, I’ll often bring a photo assistant who can wrangle one or two AD-600 pros (read: bigass battery powered flashes) on lightweight Kupo straight light stands. If we can bounce we will bounce. Its rare for me to shoot a light directly at someone on location, but occasionally its called for. I used to be all about the lighting modifier but lately I’ve been all about the bounce. It has to bounce off a relatively clean neutral group of surfaces but I think it makes a more authentic looking substitute for natural light because it picks up speculars and color and all sorts of grit from bouncing off a variety of things. Sometimes I’ll both pre-diffuse and bounce with a softbox or a parabolic. It gives me a weird photo dweeb satisfaction to see my strobes getting close to a natural window light look. My eyes tingle a bit and when I get to photography heaven I’ll probably get a few extra points to balance out some of the questionable shit I’ve done in my daily life. Probably not, but it is cathartic to think that it works that way.

Let’s get on to expression. Expression fatigue and smile muscle collapse is unavoidable when you’re shooting a single subject for the better part of 8 hours. Worst case scenario the mouth completely disengages and you get an event like what happened in El Salvador in ’89. I made that up. But to mitigate fatigue and keep natural expressions coming, we do have to shoot a scenario rather quickly and shuttle the subject in and out of the scene. We achieve this by using the assistant or someone else as a stand-in for lighting and only bring Todd in when necessary. Yah – he lets me call him “Todd.” It s a pretty sweet setup. Makes me feel rather important, if just for a day.

I try to avoid lighting “setups.” This can be annoying to my assistants as we never have a formula or ratio, but I feel like the lighting should just grow organically from the scene, complexion of the subject, existing natural light in the space etc. I like to mix it like a soup and taste it as I go which can take a bit more time but for me its more rewarding and Mr. Gloria is a patient man who enjoys the process, so this works for us and his team. (I’ve photographed the mayor 3 times now and hope to do it again in the future).

We’re not opposed to normal head shots here either- so here’s something a bit more standard, always useful.

This last image is an example of adapting the lighting to the background rather than searching out the sweet light. We added a 4′ octabox to light him a bit more for this one. My assistant, Lee Gill was the muscle. He’s excellent, personable and reliable. Also he responds to my texts in laid back milennial SoCal surfer language and it makes me happy to see “sick sick,” “HOT FIRE” or “yeeeeee” when I ask for his availability on a shoot date. Makeup and hair were done by Cindy Rankin. She’s brilliant and my first call on any photo shoot where makeup is needed.

This little collection of images were selected by Mayor Gloria’s campaign. I may have some better ones in the can in terms of pure photography geekery, but this article is about what’s useful, how I think about making it useful, and also a bit of just showing off and feeling important. If you could use some real portraits in a real environment in a real place, don’t hesitate to reach out. Lets see what we can create!