For headshots:

The day before – Stay hydrated! Drinking water helps keep your skin nice and your eyes clear. Get a good sleep the night before too – it really makes a difference to how you look and how you feel.

Makeup – If you plan on wearing makeup, generally for headshots I suggest a light touch. You’re going for more of a “afternoon gathering with wine and cheese” rather than a “massive night out with shots and a kebab”. Avoid foundation with a built-in sunscreen; sometimes that gives some funky results under lights. Bring makeup for touch-ups. If you would like me to arrange a makeup artist for your session, we can help, but let me know well ahead of time.

Hair – Definitely make sure your hair is tidy. If you want to have it cut/styled beforehand, great! I recommend against a big change in your hair just for headshots; if you’re used to longer hair and you cut it short for headshots, you might still be adjusting to it, and that might put you off of your ace-headshot game. Bring a hairbrush and any hair products if you anticipate wanting to fix up your hair.

Shaven/unshaven – For the guys, if you want to arrive unshaven and then have a quick shave halfway through, so we get a variety of looks, that’s totally cool.

Clothes – Bring a couple of tops – at least one white/light, one black, a couple of deep colours, and then anything you love and feel comfortable in. Colour is very very ok!! If you have a favourite coloured top that brings out the colour of your eyes, that’s even better. I lean towards darker richer colours – navy/blue, olive green, wine/maroon, purple, leather, and I’ll shoot those on a darker background.Avoid really strong patterns and text, they tend to grab your eye, and the only thing you want people to look at in your shot is YOU. And make sure your tops are ironed, unless you really want that wrinkly look.

Jackets – If you have a jacket or two that you like, bring them along. Leather jackets always look pretty fantastic if you have one that you love.

If we’ve discussed doing 3/4 or full-length shots, bring a couple of ensembles that you’d like to try, including shoes.

Glasses – If you want your headshots without glasses, but you wear some to your session (either regular glasses or sunglasses), you’ll want to give yourself a little time to recover from the little indents your glasses made on the bridge of your nose while you were wearing them. If you are wearing glasses for your shots, that’s ok too – we’ll choose lighting patterns and use a few tricks to minimise reflections.

Look like you!! This is maybe the most important thing – when you show up for a casting, you want to look like your photo.

For non-headshots:

Concept shoots – For planned style shoots (eg modelling sessions, dance sessions, comedy festival sessions, theatre advertising sessions) we will discuss the setup beforehand. It’s really important that we have a shared understanding of the intent of your imagery – how they will be used, what is important to you, how they should look, how they should impact the viewer. That will drive decisions on how to compose, light, style and pose the shoot.

Clothes, hair, makeup – Leading up to the shoot we’ll collaborate on how to style yourself to best fit the needs of the shoot. Many shoots are different, and some require specific styling or props.

Where should you go?

Most of the time we photograph at the beautiful Spine Street Studios. There’s plenty of parking, change rooms, makeup stations, and general excellentness. It’s at 22 Spine Street, Sumner; look for the Little Pieces Photography building. We shoot in Studio 4. To find the studio, keep the Little Pieces Photography building on your left, and head about halfway down the laneway until you see the GIANT door with a 4 on it. Just past that is a human-sized door. Knock three times and say “I AM THE LIZARD QUEEN” loudly and you may enter. (I mean,  you can do that if you want, and it’s fun when people do, but a solid knocking will do the job.) Generally if you’re early, I may be shooting with a client, so be patient and try again

On the day we’ll make choices about lighting and backgrounds so that the lighting, background, clothes, and your face all work in concert for the best outcome. I shoot with a monitor, which means we can review images during the shoot on a tablet or computer screen and see how everything is going.

If you have any questions or concerns on the day, give me a call on 0413 300 020! I may be with a client so I may take some time to get back to you!

The post Preparing for your studio session first appeared on Images by Anderson.

It’s been a particularly challenging couple of months, and I didn’t have the discipline to work through Illustrative work as I normally would. (20+ hours per image? Nope.) So this year I stuck my neck out in a few different directions. I entered four client images in the Commercial category, and was pleased to be a finalist in the Commercial division. I also entered four images from my travels in Singapore and Denver, photographs I shot for fun and for the challenge of it; those four went in to the Travel category. Not only did they win me the title of 2019 Queensland Epson Professional Travel Photographer of the Year, they also snagged me…

2019 Queensland Epson Professional Photographer of the Year!!! This is the big one.

You kind of think maybe someday you might have a shot at a title like this. When you look back at the names on the (gigantic) trophy, there are legends on there like Kelly Brown, Peter Rossi, Marcus Bell, William Long… it’s covered in royalty. So I was not prepared to hear my name called out at the end. Seeing your name engraved alongside that royalty is something else.

It’s quite the honour to represent the Queensland finalists. Some of my favourite photographers in the world were announced as finalists on the night. Huge congratulations to all of the finalists – Mark Duffus (Commercial), Mick Porter (Documentary), Selena Rollason (Family), Robyn Finlayson (Illustrative), Frances Suter (Landscape), Natarsha Marsh (Newborn), Renee Doyle (Pet/Animal), Forough Yavari (Portrait), Murray Redpath (Wedding), and Troy Lum (Student) and Afshin Jafari (Emerging). Special shoutout to Afshin and Forough, who between them took home more glass than anyone!! You can see the full list of category winners and their images, as well as the finalists names, at the Queensland awards page.

Success in something like this is never a solo effort. There are so many people to thank.

Thank you to Tristam Evison of EV Photo for his exquisite prints. I’ve been printing my own for a little while, but this year I suddenly aged five decades and slipped a disc a few weeks before the awards deadline, which threw my preparation in to disarray. An emergency callout to Tristam and he swung in to action, printing and matting all of my work for me. We had a few discussions about paper choices, and I’m sure he would have agreed with my opinion if it was right and in the end Tristam’s guidance paid dividends. (As an added bonus… thanks to a stuffup with the courier company, my Travel prints journeyed from northern NSW, to country Victoria, back to NSW, then the Gold Coast, before arriving in Brisbane in the nick of time. Maybe that’s the secret to high scoring travel images!)

The state awards are sponsored by Epson, and that’s who I trust my printing to. I’ve been printing with Epson for years. I have my eye on a printer now and I wouldn’t look anywhere else. My awards prints have been printed on Canson for the last few years too, and that paper always delivers. Before I get anywhere near printing though, I do post production using my EIZO monitor, and OMG that makes such a difference. I’ve definitely seen an improvement in the fidelity of my work when I work using an EIZO.

Massive thanks to the Queensland Council and the AIPP Awards folks who work extremely hard to run the awards each year. Particular shoutout to Gary Cranitch, Chairman of Jurors, who kept everything running smoothly on the weekend of judging despite some occasional excitement and hiccups.

I am privileged to have a posse of eagle-eyed photographer friends that look over my work and point out flaws or weaknesses that I might want to address before my work is shown to judges. Colleen, Fiona, Karen, Karen, Ben, Matt, and a few others that occasionally throw rocks at my prints – thank you all. I super appreciate your guidance and I hope I can repay the favour.

BIggest of thanks to my family – Wanda, Bailey and Tara. You guys are everything, especially when things are tough, and 2019 is the toughest yet. I wouldn’t be able to stand, literally or figuratively, without you guys holding me up.

Spoiler Alert! The four travel images are right at the bottom of this blog post… If you’re an APPA judge and you don’t want to see them, maybe stop now.

As you can see, you couldn’t wipe the smile off of my face

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Interested in headshots? Visit here for more information!

The post John’s headshots first appeared on Images by Anderson.

The pieces I submitted in my portfolio of four images were from the Queensland Theatresports Championships, Love Hurts, Around the Campfire, and Titanic The Movie The Play.

One little hiccup… For the original poster for Love Hurts, the tinder-like images were all supplied by Kat and Emily’s friends, so they needed to be replaced with photographs that I shot. With the gracious permission of some of our clients, and particular assistance from the most excellent Brisbane Arts Theatre, all of the images were swapped out for new (and generally cringeworthy) versions. That pulled it out of the Commissioned subcategory and over to Self-Commissioned, but that’s ok.

Actually, a second hiccup… For the original Queensland Theatresports Championships artwork, I used a lot of stock photography to turn the image around quickly for the client. I replaced all of that stock with nearly identical self-shot versions for the commercial piece.

The post Commercial work for Queensland Professional Photography Awards first appeared on Images by Anderson.

Sometimes photography is all about problem-solving. My team set up the shot while the cast were getting prepped and ready. We had the lighting and set up all good to go, and most of the cast members on-site… when word came through that due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, we had fifteen minutes to completely vacate the venue. Fifteen minutes!!

Part of our preparation for sessions like this is a detailed shot list, with details of each shot, the talent, the technical setup, any props, and guidelines for the posing and emotional states we want to travel through to give us not just the must-have shots but bonus shots that may end up getting a spot in the final piece. When the time constraint came down, we smashed this shot out (a composite of about eight different shots) in eight minutes flat. Full marks to the cast, who quickly took direction and somehow managed to make breathing space so their characters could explore the emotions they needed for the shot.

UPDATE; This image scored a Silver with Distinction at the 2019 Queensland Epson Professional Photography Awards, and was part of our portfolio as a finalist in the Commercial division.

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Natalie Bochenski (the driving force behind Act/React) wanted some character-centric images for a social media campaign ahead of opening night – a combination of ensemble shots and solo shots. We put together a concept that let each character tell their story, creating images that were strong as solo pieces and strong as a collection, with enough variety to build audience interest without “same same” fatigue.

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My session was a Masterclass titled Surefire Steps to Crafting an Effective Storytelling Image, and I’m pleased to say it sold out a few weeks before the start of the conference. Eeek! No pressure The session went really well – lots of great feedback, and lots of people talking about ideas and going forth to great some excellent images.

Judging was a fantastic experience as well. This really is a world-wide competition, with some of the best prints in the world coming past us. Our team stayed together for the duration of the judging, so we got to know each other and work really effectively as a unit. Much respect for my fellow judges! I think we did the prints proud, judging fairly and always with respect for the entrants, the prints, the other judges, and the community. Huge thank you to Luke Edmonson for trusting me and giving me a run as a judge.

WPPI 2020? I hope so

Thank you to Forough Yavari for the photos during my presentation. She went on to win a WPPI Grand Award, because she is a dead-set legend.

The post WPPI 2019 first appeared on Images by Anderson.

Interested in headshots? Find out more here and get in touch!

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The original concept for the hero image was a set of people sitting around the campfire telling stories and having fun, with perhaps the name of the show rising out of the smoke. Many festivals prefer the advertising images to contain no copy or titles, to keep a consistent look and feel across all of the festival images. Together we came up with the idea of doing some smoke painting and having elements of those campfire stories rising up in to the night sky.

UPDATE: The Around the Campfire image won a Silver award and was a finalist at the 2019 Queensland Epson Professional Photography Awards as part of our Commercial portfolio!

The smoke painting was a lot of fun! Taking a list of potential story topics from the Big Fork folks, and hunting through abstract smoke images to find pieces to make them come true! (A roast chicken? Sure thing, I’m sure we can find one of those…)

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