Draper Esprit headshots

Examples for discussion

By Paul Clarke Photography

October 2^nd, 2021

The current styling and approach dates back to the summer of 2014. Using locations around Buckingham Gate, and latterly Covent Garden, it has the advantage of being quick to set up, and a lower cost per head (no backdrop/lighting set-up).

Shot using a depth of field in the f/2.8-4.0 range, with subject focused in a wider landscape aspect, the high resolution image enables use both as a 'feature portrait' – to accompany a post or article – or cropped as a headshot. Each person gets around 6-8 alternatives, with a mix of eyes to- and away- from camera lens, to create a library for them to choose from.

Every background is unique and abstracted, but giving a 'sense of London'. Time, date and weather variations mean though that the colour space varies considerably. All have a consistent processing, with a slightly emphasised vibrance. But there's inevitably a trade-off in terms of consistency of tone and styling, through the choice not to use a controlled studio and lighting set-up.

Current colour & lighting style

The photos are exposed "for the face" – meaning that background exposure is a secondary consideration. There is a slight exposure 'lift' overall, which helps the reproduction on heavy print stock for annual reports etc. The objective of the lighting is for balanced exposure across the face, though in some cases short, broad or high-level lighting has been chosen to complement a particular individual's features. [Short = more light on side of face further from camera; Broad, vice-versa.]

The examples below show headshot crops of the current images. Note that although all of these examples have identical distance from "above eyebrow", to "lower edge of chin" there is still some visual appearance of size differences. Because the cropped result needs to reflect the perception of someone's actual face size in real life, it does always benefit from some manual adjustment.

Style A: 'glow'

Variant on the ColorEfex Glamour Glow effect. Evident that this works nicely on some skin/subjects, but may need some additional adjustment, particularly colour correction, at individual level. Karen's variation has been added; the other 3 are processed identically.

Style B: contrast/black point

Adjustments to contrast, exposure and black point, providing a richer, darker styling with more colour 'pop'.

Style C: vibrance boost & vignette

Very effective at bringing attention to the subject against the background.

Style D: bluer, vibrance+, vignette

A cooler colour palette, giving a slightly derealised effect. You can see a similar effect on the well-known "Portraits of MPs" project. Again, I have tweaked one portrait where the 'blueing' has not worked as well by itself.

Style E: – saturation; + vibrance

Saturation and vibrance have some similarities: both affect colour intensity. Saturation changes the intensity of all colours; vibrance has more effect on just those colours which are naturally less saturated. Playing them against each other, as in this set, creates a subtle, classy styling.

Note on 'texture': the sample notes you sent me refer to a textured background: there are several tools for adjusting this (including Texture & Clarity), but I am wary of using them on faces as they can add to much harshness to female faces, or conversely, too much softness to male.

Style F: straight b/w conversion (desaturation)

I think it's worth just briefly looking at monochrome conversions. This first one is really just a baseline (just removing colour information).

Style G: stylised, grain, texture

A more stylised monochrome conversion: showing the 'evening out' of any colour variation offered by black & white, but also the effect of adding a rougher texture.

Style H: bespoke conversion

A style aimed at giving more lightness to the images than that offered by pure desaturation.

Recommendation

There are a variety of alternative treatments available. As I hope these examples show, any adjustment (or indeed cropping approach) will need individual tweaking. Faces are all highly distinctive, as are the lighting conditions of an outdoor shoot on different days. If you want to pick the style you prefer (or, based on what you see here, request further modification to any of them) then I am happy to prepare a balanced, consistent, adjusted headshot master set for you.