I connected with Ishana through a common friend. When I called her and told her that I would like to do her headshots, she was all two thumbs up from the word go. The good thing here was that she knew what a headshot was! That saved a good 20 minutes phone time!
We got the ball rolling once her headshot session was finalized. I gave her the low down on the phone and then followed up with the headshot preparation guide on email. You gotta love when things work out well. Ishana chose to keep it simple and followed the preparation guide to the T. She showed up a few minutes ahead of her scheduled time. It never hurts to arrive before your headshot appointment. I say this because Ishana was able to see me shooting headshot for another client. This, in a way prepped her for what she was going in for.
My fav headshot makeup artist Zainab took over upon Ishana’s arrival. Zainab has been doing some good work with makeup and I really like what she does with headshots. Gets me absolutely what I want and the clients love it! We were on the shoot floor in 20 minutes.
I think the biggest challenge during a headshot session is getting my clients to ease out. It is even more difficult when you are mentoring them during their headshot session and asking them to move their head and appendages in ways they find extremely unorthodox. The client will freeze and get way conscious. At this point it is my ability as an individual to loosen them up. I usually start prodding and poking around till I find a topic that gets them to react.
So turns out that Ishana has had her stint in the big apple and then in Hong Kong as a headhunter for - get this - hedge fund managers! She had an extremely specialized job role that required to see through individuals who are wired to be calculative.
So the only topic that I could gather up to get this girl to ease out was the financial markets. I was way out of my depth here; this was all greek to me. But as a headshot photographer I have to do whatever it take for me to get my client to relax. Even if this means saying things that would make her roll her eyes. After a bit of bouncing around on this topic I started getting her to talk about companies she would invest in for the long haul. Let me tell you her eyes lit up and we had the final shot in a few minutes!
Ishana's final headshot
I realized that day that I really need to brush up on my conversation pointers for the financial markets! :) As for Ishana her mom called her from Australia the moment she saw her daughter’s professional headshots online.
That would make anyone’s day.