Donegee Media

David Mendez Corporate Head Shot

Headshot Photography – Garden Grove, CA
Photographer & Writer – Dannie Phan

Last week we did a shoot with Susannah with my new seamless white backdrop and while I was asking around for models my friend David mentioned that he was looking to get some headshots done for his LinkedIn profile since he’s expecting to be done with law school later this year. It was also a delight to hang out with him for a bit since we’ve both been quite busy with work and school.

Like last week’s shoot this was also an incredible learning experience. Suzie has some acting experience and felt incredibly comfortable getting into different characters and setting up poses. Since David was going primarily for the professional business look it felt a bit restrictive and stiff at first. Plus David can be quite camera shy. Luckily everything is digital and so there was no loss in trying to have fun with the shoot. I had David give me some silly faces, we did some cheesy corporate stock photo poses and we even did a couple terrible jumping shots.

ALSO! I highly recommend that when doing jumping shots that you’re a good three feet away from the backdrop (maybe more if you’re talent isn’t too coordinated) and remember to put sandbags on your stands. I learned that once from a bigger production shoot where we actually didn’t have any additional seamless white paper to roll from after a tear from a jumping photo with about 15 people.

I’m not sure if it was the silly posing or the wardrobe change but by the end of the shoot, it became much more natural and quite fast pace. I think if we were to do it again that we would start it off with the silly stuff and reel our way back into the business professional format. We’ll just have to wait for the next shoot.

Susannah Snowden-Ifft Headshots

Headshot Photography – Garden Grove, CA
Photographer & Writer – Dannie Phan

So I got my hands on a new ten foot seamless white background. I needed some test models and my friend Susannah needed some new headshots now that she finished her degree at UCSD and is continuing her pursuit in acting.

She came over to my garage where I was able to set everything up. I got to discover that it’s quite a challenge to set up the ten foot backdrop on your own. I actually ended up bending the top railing while I was trying to coordinate it into the mounts. Lesson learned, get more assistance.

Suzie brought over a gym bag that was probably the same brand that Marry Poppins sports around so we had oodles of clothes to pick from. I think we were able to fit her into two different decades for age group with our selection.

As I may have mentioned in the past, posing people is not necessarily my greatest strengths. Luckily Suzie and I were able to collaborate on this and I now feel a hundred times more comfortable doing headshots. She shared with me that she was typically casted as the light hearted innocent or quirky roles and that she wanted to dive into more rough and potentially villainous characters. I was able to think of characters and scenarios to which she could pose accordingly. My sister, who modeled back in high school gave us the two of us some pointers as well whenever we felt stumped out of ideas.

Overall it was a delightful shoot and the lighting was great from my garage. The seamless white was large enough where I could go from so many different angles without having to move Suzie. All the full body shots looked so clean and amped up to do fashion photography. Just got to study some more poses!