For a while now I have been photographing Headshots around my home town of West Chester, Pennsylvania. The process is fairly straight forward and simple; first we figure out if the client needs just one fully retouched image, or a set of several images… that determines if we are doing a quick 15 minute ‘Headshot mini-session’ or a full hour shoot with a variety of looks. Next, we figure out the best location for their shoot. If we are doing the shoot in West Chester, I have a couple of choices for the location and I want to show some examples from each of those location options in this post.
1st Location Option:
10 N High Street,
West Chester, PA
This is an area that many people are familiar with, and if you are familiar with the town of West Chester you’ve probably walked by this spot a hundred times per month.
Right in the center of town, on High Street between Market and Gay Street, near the old unused courthouse, is a little common area courtyard that works really well for a business headshot or portrait. I first started doing headshots in this location for the businesses located in the office building there. They were happy with their business headshots, so I asked them if it would be ok if I continued to shoot headshot sessions there with my other clients, and they said ‘sure, why not?’.
This location is easy for most people who work or live near West Chester to find. Like I said, if they work here in town they probably know this place very well. I find that this location is a great choice for a headshots and portraits that have a more professional, business-person feel to them.
I often take a photo there with the person leaning on the granite wall, or using the glass windows or the office building as the background. That’s OK, we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here… we’re just trying to get the most flattering expression from someone in under 15 minutes so they can get back to their day.
There are some more options in this area for different backgrounds. There’s some grassy areas to use, some small trees, a fountain, and the pillars and architecture of the old courthouse itself. Overall, this is an area that offers a lot of photographic versatility, as there are many backgrounds and looks to choose from in a relatively small area.
Even though there are a lot of options for different varieties of backgrounds, I find myself going back to what works best for a quick 15-minute business headshot— a quick set of photos where the person is leaning on the granite wall and another quick set of photos with them seated with the sidewalks and grass as a background.
2nd Location Option:
Workplace or Office Environment
What could be more simple and convenient— walk over to the photographer’s headshot ‘set’ a few feet away from your desk, and smile for about 25 photos. Afterwards, spend just a few minutes to choose your favorite headshot image from the back of my camera, and in about a day you have your fully retouched Headshot image file delivered to your inbox.
Below are some examples of Headshot mini sessions that I did for a local West Chester area business, they had me shoot the headshots right there inside the office with the same background for each employee.
Continuing on with that idea of doing the headshot in the workplace, sometimes you want to show a little bit of the background to give the portrait a little bit more context. Below, I did some headshots in a local West Chester area hair salon, with just a blurry hint of the hair products for their background.
At an Eye Doctor’s office here in town, we were able to setup this look (below) for the Doctor’s portraits using the reception area as a background.
At another West Chester area business, we made a portrait and headshot set that incorporated a bit more of the business interior, branding, and product displays to use for the headshot background.
3rd Location Idea
Local Park or Green Space
Lastly, there is always a simple option to do headshot photos in one of the many public parks around town here in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Parks can work better for people who want to come across as more casual and lighthearted in their headshots, and to keep things simple. The park background gives us the opportunity to completely blur out the background until we have a blurry swath of flattering green color… the focus is on the person without much else to distract the viewer.
In the past, I’d often reach for a longer prime lens in this situation, since we have plenty of space to use and I want maximum blur on the background. My go-to lens for this situation was often the 135mm f/2 or perhaps the ultra sharp Canon 200mm f/2 prime lens, which is what I used for the images above and also directly below this sentence.
Do you notice the difference between the look created above (with a longer lens), compared to the look of a shorter lens used in the photos below? The images above were shot with 200mm and the images below were captured with an 85mm 1.2 RF lens. I feel like a shorter 85mm lens feels more close and friendly to the viewer, is easier to work with, and flatters the face more… at the the expense of bringing the background a very tiny bit back into focus.
Do you see a difference with the different focal ranges? It mostly affects the amount of blur that we see in the background, but also has a subtle affect on the face proportions, and helps give a feeling of either being closer or further away from the person pictured.
The headshots above were shot with a longer telephoto lens (200mm) and the shots below were shot at more standard lengths (85mm and 135mm). These days, for headshots I’m leaning a bit more towards the shorter focal range of 85mm. It feels like the viewer is a bit closer to the person in the photo, and I interpret the image as feeling a bit more casual, candid and friendly. Anyway, that’s why it’s wise to hire a seasoned professional photographer such as myself, so all this technical stuff is figured out ahead of time!
A local park can be an easy solution for a simple yet flattering headshot, and there are plenty to choose from around town here in West Chester, Pennsylvania. My go to Park location is Everhart Park, a versatile location that features some nice tree lined paths that work well for headshot and portrait sessions.
I hope you have some ideas now about where we can do your headshot. 🙂
Get in touch to schedule your Headshot or Portrait session today!
