Mike,

I’ve been doing my do diligence and came across your work. It’s quirky and unique – a bit like myself. I’m a local composer (Aptos) and need a headshot for Monday, June 1st for the Berkeley Symphony website. Any chance you could put something together by then. I know it’s a tall order. Please let me know.

The email was from Donald Myers. Donald is the rad-est classical music composer I’ve ever met. Ok, so he is the only classical music composer I’ve ever met. But is is still a rad guy. Funny thing is for some reason I thought he wrote that he was a conductor as opposed to a composer. So immediately I had visions of sticking him knee deep in the San Lorenzo River in full dress conducting away. Oh well. Any conductors out there need some portraits done?

We talked on the phone a bit about what he was looking for, which when we discussed it further turned out to be two separate shoots. One was a basic head shot for the Berkeley Symphony web site and a second lifestyle shoot for a website he is building to promote his work. Don has the honor of being chosen as one of Berkely Symphony’s Emerging Composers.

The catch was that the head shot needed to be ready by the 1st. Because I still haven’t managed to shake of that pesky day job of mine that left a very small window to shoot, edit and deliver the images. That window turned out to be as follows: shoot on Sunday, have images ready by Sunday night. There would be no option of re-shooting should it be the case he or I were not happy with the images.

Of course I pulled it off Not that I wasn’t sure I’d be as stoked on the images as I am now. That’s just one of those things where I am rarely sure how a shoot turns out until I get home and get a good look at the images.

I still haven’t seen which of the 50 plus images I offered up to Don he chose. (in case you were wondering, yes that is a lot of images – typically you are lucky if a photographer gives you a dozen images to choose from) When Berkely has the image up I will post a link. Below are two of my favorites. The one on the right was shot with my favorite lens – an oh-so-creamy-with bokeh-when-shot-wide-open 50mm.

My game plan for head shots and portraits is first thing get the basic, standard (boring) usable image in the can and then the real fun starts when we play around with light and composition. Or in this case, break out from the constraints of what is required for a head shot and simply add a bit of expression and personality.

Say for example…

I’m stoked on how the shoot turned out and only wish I could post them all here. I’m even more stoked to do our lifestyle shoot.