Michael Whitehurst Photography Michael Whitehurst Photography

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Why you need a new headshot on LinkedIn

October 8th, 2018

First things first.  If your LinkedIn profile pic is from a boozy weekend in Vegas you do not need to read any further.  Book a session with me ASAP so I can help you look professional. 

Book an appointment online

For everyone else let me start with a story.  

One of my good friends is a corporate recruiter at a fast growing company.  He spends most of his work days on LinkedIn looking for candidates for open positions.  If he comes across your profile in his search I guarantee you that he looks at your picture.  For some roles, like sales, a professional appearance is critical.  For others, like engineers, it is less important, but it is still important.  If you look sloppy or unprofessional he is far more likely to sail past your profile and on to the next candidate that matched his search criteria.  

In the professional world, LinkedIn IS the first impression you will make with potential new bosses, customers, clients, and even recruiters.  You need your profile picture to be current and make you look like your best professional self.  

I specialize in making photographs of you that will make you look your best.  Contact me today to schedule an appointment.

http://www.michaelwhitehurst.com/contact 


July 27th, 2018

Photo shoot with Jessie: 5 looks in 3 hours

I had the opportunity to shoot the forever amazing Jessie recently.  She is in the process of building 2 new businesses and needed several different looks for her websites and social media. 

To make sure we would have the room we would need I rented a studio space at FD Studios.  This was my first time renting with them and it was great.  The studio was clean and everything worked!  My only wish was that the space was air conditioned since that day was a scorcher, but we managed to wrap by 11:30am so it was tolerable.  

The first set-up was a basic clam-shell lighting with a giant round soft box above as the main light and a silver reflector below.  I also added a second light behind Jessie to hit her hair and create better separation between her and the background.  The scene looked like this:

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And here are some final images from that setup.  

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Next I decided to warm up the background so I added a couple of speedlights with CTO gels on them.  One of the speedlights is hiding behind a v-flat because it was throwing too much light on Jessie, and I failed to bring any black foam core to flag it with.  Here is the set-up:

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And a couple of final images from this one.  

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Jessie was keen to get some full-body shots so for the final set-up I built a huge scrim that was 5 feet wide and 8 feet tall and lit it with a bare strobe from behind.  I used the bug umbrella as a fill light, and left the hair light in place.  The set looked like so:

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And some final images from this configuration.  As you can see I moved in for some closer shots as well as back for full body.  

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After all the business shots were done we had some fun with this floral jumpsuit and gigantic hat.  These were my favorite shots from the session.  

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All in all it was a good day of shooting!