Alternatives For Corporate Backgrounds
So. Moving on. As we were talking about (IMHO) using the real background for your corporate headshot photo is always the best plan. We at Dallas Headshots have a bunch on hand and available to bring with us. But for the occasion that a client puts us in “service orientation” mode and requests us to help out with “the background situation” there are always a few things we can do to help out. As we talked about in the last post, I’m a big fan of Savage Background’s “Thunder Gray” and I use it a lot for corporate headshots all by itself. It’s clean, and conservative. Goes great with dark suits and any color. But in addition to that, it’s also pretty easy to do a “cut and paste” onto other backgrounds. It has just enough contrast for my taste to perform the technique. You’ll remember I said this is not my favorite thing to do, but you know, “Price / Quality / Service” and same goes for the big three answers to client inquiries “Yes / Yes / and, uh, well? Yes.” So when we have to we will try and pull it off. Interestingly enough Photoshop CS5 which just came out recently has a nice new upgrade to their “Refine Edge” function which makes this easier that ever (well, not easy, but reasonable without going nuts.) Here is a great little video by Martin Evening (the author of “Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers”) that is an extract from the book’s DVD which illustrates the technique. Additionally, check out a blog with step by step by Collin Smith which makes it fairly simple. We also use Photoshop CS5 Camera Raw brush / desaturate tool to do this (also easily done in LightRoom 2 /3 beta) which is great and really fast thanks to the auto mask feature. So to sum it up? If you are a client and have corporate headshots you need done around the country, but you want to use our service, e.g. for the bulk of them? You can easily have your out-of-town corporate headshot photography services shoot their headshots on Savage Background’s “Thunder Gray” and we will (with their permission of course) put them on our agreed upon background. I’ll give you an example here in this post with the same background we used at the Moneygram hotel shoot. While I was there I took an out-of-focus shot of the painting. Now (if they like) Moneygram can have any photographer, anywhere shoot nice headshots for them (hopefully to agree and match the lighting and tone, which is pretty simple,) and they have consistency all over the country and in their case worldwide. Now that’s service for you! In addition I can use the background, as well as others I keep on file for other clients who want something different. Here is an example of a gentleman who needed a 3/4 type shot to be inserted into a layout. I’m just using it here to show how we can go from Thunder Gray, to another one of my standard in-studio backgrounds I use all the time, to the hotel background. Bing, Bang, Boom. As they say? ”You’re only as strong as your alternatives.”
