Business portrait of a freelance photographer
Rômulo Morishita Ueda reached out few weeks ago with pretty a straightforward photography request. He’s looking for an updated business portrait taken for his website.
However, two things make his request more challenging. First, he’s a good friend of mine. Second, Romulo is a photographer himself.
While I take pride in taking my photography client’s vision and turning it into the image, I was cautious. Firstly, I am not huge fan of photographing portraits of my friends. Secondly, photographing another professional, always stresses me out.
I had a bride once who’s dad was a photojournalist for 20 years. I noticed him observing me working during the wedding several times. We ended up creating a nice relationship afterwards. But the feeling that your photography skills are being closely watched could become a distraction.
Luckily, Rômulo (the bright side of communication with another professional photographer) eased this challenge quite a bit up for me by giving complete freedom on how to approach this assignment.
Before the photo session, I asked him what message he wants to send to his potential clients with his business portrait. This was going help me to learn what photography approach should be. Rômulo wanted to amplify his approach ability, his unobtrusive photography style. As well remaining who he is- stylish, friendly, and relaxed.
So one cloudy morning we’ve met in Madison’s downtown and went on the photo adventure. I photograph him in several locations that we pick depending on lighting conditions that day.
To sum up the photo shoot, we stop by my photography studio. I finish portrait session with few moody, bold and straightforward professional business headshots.
As a result of good communication, I capture some images that my client and I are very happy with. Some of the takeouts from the portrait session are below.
All images in this blog post were shot with Fuji X-Pro2 and minimally processed with Lightroom CC.