More often than not, when it comes to shooting headshots of executives, time is limited and this held true for a recent shoot of the new Chairman of Arup Americas - Andy Howard. But that wasn't the only reason I was crunched for time on this particular shoot. Normally when I've been hired to shoot headshots at businesses in Manhattan, I bring a certificate of liability insurance specific to the building. But this shoot was a last minute call, a couple hours beforehand, so getting a certificate wasn't going to be possible in that timeframe. When I arrived at Arup's downtown office, it seemed that the building security might not let me in. After chatting with the building security for about 30 minutes including multiple calls between Arup and the security guard, I was finally allowed to enter, phew!
At this point, I had about 20 minutes to scout locations and create two different lighting setups - the client wanted a headshot of the Chairman with the adjacent building in the background and then another headshot on a white background. I ended up getting both setups finished right as Andy came into the room for his shoot. At that point we had approximately 10 minutes to nail headshots at both setups before he had to attend another meeting. It was definitely a little stressful but we had fun and ended up with some great shots. Here are two of the six Arup ended up acquiring from the shoot:
The headshot above was the photograph selected by Arup for Andy's profile page and press release announcing his promotion to Chairman of the Americas.
