Gary Hughes is a headshot photographer from Orlando Florida and co-host of the PhotoBomb Podcast. Today I’m excited to chat about organizing and shooting high volume headshots.

Become A Premium Member to access to more in-depth questions that help move you forward!

In This Episode You'll Learn:

• How Gary got started in photography

• What Gary struggled with most when learning photography

• What is the the job description of a headshot photographer

• What the difference between a headshot taken by a professional and an amateur

• 3 steps to building a headshot

• How to make do with the lighting gear you have

• How to make do without a studio and be taken seriously as a professional photographer

• How to approach every new person who sits in front of your camera to take their photo

Premium Members Also Learn:

• How to price 500 headshots

• The tools to marker yourself and your photography business

• A simple but effective marketing strategy

• How to spend less time editing and delivering to maximize your profit

Resources:

• Gary Hughes Website

• Gary Hughes on Instagram

• Gary Hughes on Twitter

• Gary Huges on Facebook

• Fuji x100V review

Did you enjoy this episode? Check out more recent interviews with other great guests!

Full Episode Transcription:

Disclaimer: The transcript was transcribed electronically by Temi.com and may contain errors that do not reflect accurately what the speaker said. Because of this, please do not quote this automated transcript.

Raymond: 00:00:00 Welcome to the beginner photography podcast. Today we're talking about how to shoot 500 head shots in a day. So let's get into it.

Intro: 00:00:11 Welcome to the beginner photography podcast, a weekly podcast for those who believe that moments matter most and that a beautiful photo is more than just a sum of its settings, a show for those who want to do more with the gear they have to take better photos today. And now your host Raymond Hatfield.

Raymond: 00:00:29 Welcome back to this episode of the beginner photography podcast. As always, I'm your host Raymond Hatfield and I couldn't be more excited to be here today. Today is such a fun episode and I'm really excited to share it with y'all. But first I want to tell you about something. A little anecdote that I have. So as many of you know, I shoot the Fuji cameras professionally, I shoot with an expert too, but personally I shoot with a Fuji X 70. The X 70 is getting pretty old. So I really wanted something that could kind of replace both cameras, the expert to in the [inaudible]. And I've always liked the X 100 series cameras. But I never fought. I never thought that they were ready for professional use, but just last month they announced the Fuji X 100 V and I really think that this is the camera that makes it ready for professional use.

Raymond: 00:01:25 Right. I can use it personally because it has a a new tilt screen, which if you're watching on YouTube is a very handy but it also has just all of the new internals. Right? So I was shooting with the XT3 for awhile. And the X 100 V has all the same internals of it and I really enjoyed shooting with the [inaudible] three. The [inaudible] was definitely ready for, it was, it was a professional camera. So being able to use this camera both personally and professionally is really exciting. So obviously I pre-ordered the camera, I was ready for it to arrive. And in that time I just, and I'm sure that you've, you know, felt the same way. I just got so excited. I could not wait for the camera to come. I was dreaming about all the photos that I could take with it using either the optical view finder or using the tilt screen when I'm taking photos of the kids with having a smaller camera means that you can be a little bit more hidden and blur that line between photographer and just citizen out on the street or, or you know, still interacting with guests at a wedding just to be able to get more genuine photos.

Raymond: 00:02:28 And I was just so excited to get this camera and when it arrived, I am boxed it. I felt it in my hands. It feels great. I started shooting with it. It was awesome. And then I flew down to Texas San Antonio, admit all of this, you know, Corona virus you know, concerns. I flew down to San Antonio, which arguably has, you know, in America, if there's one place where there is coronavirus, that's, that's the place. So but I went down there for work and I took one day, I did a few days, but one day in particular I went out specifically to shoot with this brand new camera. The Fuji X 100 V and after I got back, I mean it was a joy to shoot with. It was, it was just a delight. It's really like the only way that I could describe it. It is so much fun and it feels just like an extension of how my brain works when it comes to photography.

Raymond: 00:03:20 So it was very exciting. But when I got back to the to the house and I imported all the photos into my iPad and I started going through them on a, in Lightroom CC. It's interesting because you realize, and I've gone through this time and time again, but it's a camera isn't going to change who you are as a photographer and that's really hard thing to come to terms with when you first purchase a camera because it's a large purchase, right? And you tell yourself it's okay that I'm making a large purchase because this is going to help me get to where I want to be. And we're only thinking in terms of photography of the photos that we're taking. We're not thinking of it as a tool. And with the, with the photos that the camera takes, you're in control of all of that.

Raymond: 00:04:10 So therefore, you know, photography, it never changes. So even though I was extremely excited for this camera and what it could do, once you look at the photos, you realize, Oh, I'm, I'm still the same photographer. I'm still taking all of the exact same photos. And then at that point it just becomes more utilitarian. And then you look at the you look at the camera as a tool. Well, what can these buttons do for me? How can I set it up so that I'm the most successful that I can be when shooting with this camera? In the situations that I typically shoot in. And when it comes to that point, it becomes less of an emotional purchase, right? I mean, if he, if he, if you just feel this camera in your hand, it feels very premium. And that is the feeling of being premium is very emotional.

Raymond: 00:04:59 It's very emotional. But the utilitarianism of it being a tool is not. So while I'm happy with the camera, just know that even me as somebody who has gone from, you know entry level Canon DSLR many years ago and then slowly upgrading finally to a full frame Canon DSLR with you know, L lenses and then going to a food GXT T one and then changing over time, looking at my every single time I got really excited for the new photos that I'd be able to take, but I haven't taken any new photos. All of that is on me. All the photos that I take or all my photos, my style doesn't change as a photographer. So I hope that that helps you. Maybe you're in the spot right now where you're thinking, Oh gosh, I really wish that I could upgrade my camera. Think of how great it would be.

Raymond: 00:05:53 People would take me seriously as a professional and they don't, they don't, the camera doesn't really change that unless you're working with like really high end corporate clients who maybe need like a medium format camera. But in general, people aren't going to look at the camera and instantly know like, Oh, that's a professional, or Oh, that's just a hobbyist. What really makes a difference is obviously you continuing to learn and continuing to educate yourself, trying new things, pushing yourself the boundaries of what it is that you know as a photographer and how you see the world. Those are the things that change you. And when it comes to gear, a lens will always make a bigger impact on your photos within the camera body will. So I hope that that you know, give you shedding a little bit of light into a situation that I just encountered really helps you.

Raymond: 00:06:43 Now, while I'm still obviously very happy with this camera there's just that little bit of, you know, the the honeymoon phase is over as the, as the phrase goes, it's like, Oh, that's right. This is simply a tool. It's not, it's not a magic wand. It's a tool. So anyway, I hope that helped. If you want to see my review of the X 100 V and the photos that I took in Texas, I actually posted the link in the show notes of this episode. So if you're in have a podcast, you can just swipe up. There's a link right there, you click it and then it'll take you right to it. You can see some example photos that are just straight out of camera shots. Really, really wonderful stuff. So I hope that you check that out. But today, today we are talking with Gary Hughes and Gary Hughes is a very predominant headshot photographer in the world of well headshots, corporate headshots acting head shots.

Raymond: 00:07:35 He just loves to photograph the human face and I really think that you're going to get a lot out of this episode. And as always, I cut a portion of the interview out just for premium numbers that focuses on how to make money with your camera. So in this episode, premium members are going to hear how to even price 500 headshots an effective but neglected powerful marketing strategy for anybody shooting head shots. How to minimize your time spent on shooting and delivering 500 head shots so that you can make more money and an idea on and ideas on how to automate your entire admin process of your photography business. So again, a lot in this episode that I know that you are going to take away as a premium member. If you are not a premium member, you can hear the answers to all of these questions from Gary himself by heading over to beginner photography, podcast.com clicking that premium membership button up at the top of the page. You'll also get a bunch of extras, like a access into the premium members Facebook group where we do monthly challenges to help you grow your business and just education there as well. So again, we're going to photography podcast.com. Click that premium membership button up at the top to join. So that's it. Let's go ahead and get on

Raymond: 00:08:56 Into this interview with Gary Hughes. Gary Hughes is a headshot photographer from Orlando, Florida and the cohost of the photo bomb podcast. Today, we are going to be talking all about organizing and shooting high volume headshots. Gary, you're the man here. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Gary Hughes: 00:09:14 Yeah, thanks for having me. And I had no idea what we were going to talk about, but I'm glad I did

Raymond: 00:09:19 Something that I'm good at. Yeah, usually usually it's a, a, it's, it's a complete mystery to the guest. Whatever we're going to talk about. So I'm glad that you're excited for this because I can talk about anything as you'll find out. So let's try to keep it under 60 minutes. Let's just see. We'll see. I don't know that we can, yeah, we'll see what happens. But in order to do that, I think we have to start from the beginning, which is how did you get your start in a, in photography to begin with?

Gary Hughes: 00:09:44 Yeah, good question. I grew up in a photography family. My parents are, we're both professional photographers. They're retired now from photography after like almost 40 years running a studio. And me and all my siblings took turns working in the family business. I lived at the studio as a kid, I was a, I was sick a lot when I was younger, had a lot of chest infections, bronchitis, stuff like that. And so I w I missed a lot of school. I never got perfect attendance. But on those days when I was not at school, I was always, my dad ran the studio and I had to go to the studio with my dad even when I was sick no matter what. So I spent a lot of time in the studio and then when I was old enough, by the time I was eight, I was, my first job was developing a eight by 10 black and white headshots in the studio for my dad.

Gary Hughes: 00:10:31 So I in his dark room. So I'll do an eight by 10 enlargements of business head shots. Like that was crazy. It's like the first thing I did and it took, I dunno, 30 years to, to for that V to realize itself. But so you know, we all grew up putting together proof books for weddings. It was a small town photography studio. So they did everything. So I assisted with photo and video loading film into backs for [inaudible] or for a mummy as and, and Broncos and carrying lights on weddings, even shooting videos at weddings and you know, all kinds of stuff. And that was basically all of us because, you know, we were a family of five with not a lot of money. And so all the kids were basically the labor in the studio. And eventually that was just, I decided that was not what I was going to do, had a big falling out with my dad one day. I think I was probably about 17. And, and, and we were fighting over something the way that they were doing something in the business. And he just, he basically said, this is my business and you're going to do it the way that I want or you're going to get out. And I was like, well, fine, I'll just get out.

Raymond: 00:11:30 So dad, move right there. I love it. You're going to do it my way. But he was right. He was right. I was clearly wrong. I was just,

Gary Hughes: 00:11:37 I knew only enough to be dangerous. And thought I knew better than him and I didn't, you know. And so I worked as a manager at a movie theater and I, and then after I, you know, I went to college and then I worked in music and then I worked in construction, worked in it and eventually many years later took an interest in photography cause I never really photographed anything, only really assisted. And so I was working at circuit city rest in peace and I bought a, a digital rebel on a black Friday sale probably about 14 years ago, 13 or 14 years ago, and started taking pictures for fun. And I kinda liked it. And because I am who I am, I can't do anything without trying to figure out how to monetize it. And so my my mom actually recommended me to a photographer in the Orlando area where I was living at the time and to go and try and get a job there and I got a job at a studio there. And that's sort of how I got into it in the modern era. I, I worked for another photographer a couple of years carrying bags and I learned, God, I learned a lot there. And then eventually met my wife and she was into photography as well. And we, well, I didn't meet her as my wife. I just met a girl at a bar who ended up,

Raymond: 00:12:48 Sure, yeah, yeah, I'm going to be a future wife. That'd be weird. Right. I knew, I knew right away,

Gary Hughes: 00:12:54 But six months later we start our business together and we weren't even married yet. We were just dating. We weren't even engaged when we started our business. And that was a [inaudible] nobody was cool with that by the way. Like no way. And and then the just sort of progressed from there. And that was 11 years ago we started the business together and here we are.

Raymond: 00:13:15 So when you were starting out in your family run business? I would imagine so. My dad used to my stepdad used to like, he, he rebuilt a it was a 69 Chevelle. And I remember oftentimes I'd go out there and I would help him, you know, help in air quotes as a like an eight year old kid or whatever. But I didn't pay attention to anything that I was doing. I wasn't learning anything specific. Yeah, exactly. Was it the same for you and, and photography? Like did you have to learn photography after?

Gary Hughes: 00:13:43 Yeah, I didn't, I didn't know anything about photography really. I mean I knew a little bit about the photography business. I can tell you how to shoot a wedding or what to expect at a wedding at least. And you know, there were lots of things I knew about photography but not about the actual craft or art of photography. I knew very, very little almost nothing cause I hadn't so much just taken a single photo other than with a, like an instant camera my entire life until I was an adult. And everything I did was support staff really in the studio. So it was like, you know, putting together proof albums and developing pictures and carrying bags. And I knew I knew exactly where to stand to light a goal group for a wedding, but I didn't know how to operate the camera. I didn't,

Raymond: 00:14:30 That's, that's so interesting to think about. So when so when you did first buy that a camera circuit city and you first started taking pictures, what was the hardest thing for you to understand or learn about photography itself?

Gary Hughes: 00:14:44 Nothing. I mean, I guess the hardest thing to understand is that you don't know anything. And immediately, you know, you think you've got whatever it is that people say, Oh, you have an eye for it. Or Oh, you have, you know, Oh, you're so talented. Or Oh, you've, you've got to, you're an artist. And you know, when you think that the thing is very often that comes with a kind of bizarre narcissism that you think that everything that you do is good. And however, as as ridiculous as that is for people starting out in photography that you think you're, you almost everybody thinks they're way better than they actually are when they start learning how bad you suck is the most important part of growing as a photographer. However, if you learn that too soon, you'll quit. So you have to insulate your fragile little soul from knowing how bad you suck with this sort of like self defense mechanism of this artistic narcissism you surround yourself with.

Gary Hughes: 00:15:39 And slowly as you learn, there's like a, there's like a, a convergence where your lack of knowledge and your knowledge of your lack of knowledge meet in the middle and then all of a sudden you realize how bad you suck, but you're into it enough to where you're willing to keep going. And if you reach that point too soon, you might quit because there are still days, dude, where I, I mean, and I'm not, I'm an accomplished photographer. We've been in business 11 years for myself and I still feel like I suck some days. Like there are shoots that come out of them like what the hell did you just do in there? You know, like do you even know what you're doing? I can't tell you how many times I'm on a, I'm taking pictures and in my head my brain is going, you're blown at dude, you're blowing it man. You're blowing it. And that doesn't really go away completely. It just gets less frequent. Yes, yes and yes.

Raymond: 00:16:29 So good to hear from another photographer that I'm not the only one who shows up to a wedding and things to myself. They're going to figure it out on the fraud today. Like today's the last day of my professional career. All it is,

Gary Hughes: 00:16:38 It's just repetitive. You're going to continue to run into situations where you're challenged and you're going to continue to, to let very basic things slip your mind in the pursuit of this artistic excellence. You're going to be like, why wasn't this working? And then you realize, Oh crap, I forgot to turn that other light in the room off and it was ruining the photo and that was firing in the background the whole time. Like this, you get to going to make dumb mistakes, but you have to sort of temper that enthusiasm, that artistic enthusiasm that need to create with knowledge. And yet if one takes precedence over the other, you sort of, you sort of lose out on the actual excellence in the creation. And so like you have to have that enthusiasm to create and you can't let the, your lack of technical ability squelch that.

Gary Hughes: 00:17:29 But you also can't let your enthusiasm and your belief in your artistic nervous and your, your right as an artist to create and your need to create. You can't let that just make you glance over the technical because you can look at for photographic artists all over the world. And let me tell you the ones that you think are the artsy ones can be very, very technical. I don't know if you've, if you know Lindsay Adler for example, like she is a brilliant artist and really lovely human being and she's, to me, she's one of my favorite photographers and people, but as a photographer, she is an incredible conceptual artist, but the technical is down and I love that. She teaches that and I think that when you're new, you might gloss over things that seem harder or you may go, Oh, I'm an artist. I'm not really a technical photographer. I don't really do that. That's not my thing. And you're like, yeah, and you can, you can really cheat yourself out of the ability to make better art. You know what I mean?

Raymond: 00:18:28 Out of the ability to make better art. Wow, that's a, that's going to be my memorable quote for this episode. That's great. That is. I had never, I had never thought about that, especially in that convergence point that you were talking about as a, at least for me, everything that I've always wanted to do, I just kinda pushed through, you know? You know what I mean? I don't know. I don't know. Now that you say something, I'm thinking of a lot of people who I know who bought a camera with full intentions of going pro and then six months later they never touch that camera again. And I'm thinking to myself now, was it, I always thought originally like, Oh, well, you know, they couldn't get clients as fast as they wanted or whatever. It was not even thinking about not pushing through that that technical barrier of not knowing what's next I suppose. So that that's great. That is an entirely different way of thinking about things. And I love that. So

Gary Hughes: 00:19:21 In a perfect world, you would buy a camera and you'd buy a textbook and you would learn and you would master the concept and you'd become an apprentice to a great photographer and you would learn everything you needed to know and then you would seamlessly step into your own career as your own photographer knowing everything you needed to know to move forward. But that's just not the industry at large. It's, I have a camera, I like to take pictures. And then if you show enough enthusiasm for it, even without seeking it out, people will seek you out to take pictures for them and offer you money. It happens. They're like, Oh you know what? You're so good. Can you take pictures? Of my kids. I love the pictures you take of your kids. Could you take pictures of my kids? And you didn't even ask for that.

Gary Hughes: 00:20:02 And then you go, then a light bulb goes on because if you got that little bit of an entrepreneurial spirit and you might see this light at the end of the tunnel that says, Holy crap, I could get paid to do this thing and I really, really love, and then, and then that, and then it just goes from there. That's how it happens. So so much you can take, but I caution everybody out there. You can love photography without making it your job. And if you, if you love photography and you, and you want to continue to love photography, there was 100% chance that if you don't make it your job, that you will still love photography. Absolutely. Down the road. Now, if you love photography and you try to make it your job and you do it poorly and you crash and burn as an entrepreneur, as a business person, there was a hundred percent chance you were going to hate photography.

Gary Hughes: 00:20:48 By the time you're done, nothing can make you more miserable than trying to do the thing that you love for a living. And failing at it or succeeding at it can be even worse because now you're overwhelmed and now you're having to do it all the time. Not for fun, but to take pictures of other people's, not those little kids that you don't like or go to somebody's wedding and get yelled at by the drunk uncle. I mean, that can take the joy out of it thing. So, Oh man. Yeah. I'm sure you've got stories, right?

Raymond: 00:21:15 I don't know about drunk uncles and stuff. I mean, you know, there's the occasional you know, person telling me, you know, why is my flash over there or whatever. And then I just kind of walk away. I suppose. But luckily I've been, I've been really lucky as far as you know, I don't really have that many horror stories. Not that many horror stories, you know?

Gary Hughes: 00:21:34 No. All right, well that's good. I'm not saying that everybody has those, but I'm glad that I had the mother or I had a, my very first horse, sorry, I was 14 assisting on a wedding and the bride's aunt died on the dance floor. Had a heart attack and dropped dead. Yes, I was 14 so my first, my first human being die when I was 14 at a wedding and that's not funny, but at the same time, is there something worse that can happen? Anyway, I was photographing a wedding once and it was in Florida, it was August, it was a hundred degrees outside. And so I was trying to get the wedding party into the shit and they wanted pictures out on the golf course. And so there's this gigantic Oak tree and I brought everybody under it to do the pictures under the Oak tree to get them all out from the sun. And then the mother of the bride tripped and fell and hit the ground on a mogul and broke a couple of ribs and had to, and I had to go to the emergency room. Yeah. And she missed the reception.

Raymond: 00:22:38 What do you, what do you do at that point? Do you like, Oh my gosh, like do you take care of her and then say,

Gary Hughes: 00:22:44 Hurry man, you just keep going, man. The bride was up for an hour crying her eyes out and the reception started lighting. I mean, like all kinds of terrible things can happen, can go wrong at a way. One of the why, you know, then they just all seem to happen to me I guess.

Raymond: 00:23:01 Yeah, I think so. I've never had anything like that. Like that happened to me, thankfully. Thankfully. So when, so when did you, when did you transition from, you know, shooting weddings or children to, to now, now focusing on head shots, which you do now?

Gary Hughes: 00:23:14 Well this is a story I've told a few times. I'll try to tell it in a new way for anybody who might've heard it before, but we, I you can only emulate what you know to start with. So I emulated the, what I grew up in, which is the photography studio that does everything. And so I think that that works depending on where you live, you can be in a market, a small enough market in a small town you have, you can't really specialize in a small town. So depending on the small town, if you are in big city, you almost have to specialize. People expect you to specialize. And so if you are in a large saturated market, I think that the photography studio that does everything is it just just a harder way to live because your marketing isn't as focused.

Gary Hughes: 00:24:03 You're scattershot all over the place. And so that's what we did. We did weddings and portraits and high school seniors and babies and family and dragging couches into fields and photographing babies in buckets and all that crap. But, and we did the in person sales thing and, and the whole nine yards, but we did everything. Anything you needed a picture of we'd say yes to. And it was a very unhappy, a unhappy time for me as a, as a business owner. Not that I've been unhappy person. The business was unfocused and it was unpleasant a lot of the time because as I came to realize I didn't like 90% of the stuff that I was shooting. I didn't want to do it. And so we had had a line in actors head shots. Funny enough, we have a fairly robust entertainment market here in central Florida because of the parks and stuff like that.

Gary Hughes: 00:25:00 And my wife was good friends with a girl who was an actor and she had been in a couple of feature films and she needed a new headshot. So Julie, my wife actually went and photographed her and did her head shots. She took them to her agent or agent, like the headshots and then asked if she could meet with us. So we went and met with this agent and then that started it off and we started getting actors coming into the studio here and there and it was a nice little supplemental part of your business in our market. It would be very difficult to, for that to be the only thing that you do. And we still photograph a lot of actor head shots, but it's about 10% of the business to be honest with you. So it's not like an entertainment headshots. Yeah, it's a significant but not a huge part of the business financially.

Gary Hughes: 00:25:40 And so one day a guy calls up and because you know, I had built our website and, and headshots were on the website and this was before really at the beginning of when headshot started to be a thing that everybody had to have. This wasn't, not every LinkedIn was new. Facebook was new, you know, my space was still fairly popular. And so this wasn't the time that we know now where everyone has to have ed shot. This was before that we sort of caught that wave riding in a, and we're doing this to the point where when I was teaching photography at conferences and stuff, which I started to do fairly early cause I started teaching social media marketing, website design and stuff for photographers rather than teaching photography itself. And I wasn't, nobody would let me teach about headshots and I'm gonna let me talk about head shots because nobody even believed it was a standalone genre in photography. There was more of a sub genre of portraiture and everybody did a little bit of it, but it wasn't a real thing. And I knew that it was because here's what happened. A guy called up and he sounded like an older guy. I don't know how you sound older, like grandpa.

Raymond: 00:26:51 I hear it in my head though. I know when I was your age, we didn't have hot chocolate, we just had hot,

Gary Hughes: 00:26:57 You know, like stuff like that. And anyway, so the guy calls up, he's an old guy, but in that battle is probably in his 50s or whenever. And he's like, and do you photograph anybody who's not young and good-looking? Cause obviously it was on our website, but he's looking at all the actors. And this guy was an attorney and he needed a headshot for his law firm's website. And it was at that moment that I realized that I was working so hard to get actors head shots. So when it was pale in comparison and in amount to the other types of head shots that are out there that I needed. And so we started to show more of that on our website and started to market more towards that and it just became this thing to where there are two things that happened at once.

Gary Hughes: 00:27:38 One was I found out that I was going to be a father and this was my daughter Ellie who just turned five and my wife told me there's a really funny story behind this. But anyway, she told me she was pregnant and the first thing was I thought was, okay, I know you're scared Gary, but you have to like hug your wife and tell her how happy you are. You know, so try not to crap your pants. And then the second thought I had unbidden, which was wild. It was you got to get out of the wedding business. And I remembered in that moment all of the weekends that my parents were working or that I was working with them in the family business. And hold on, let me see where we go. Sorry about that. My screensaver just kicked on. And so basically what happened was, is I realized, not that I was, I was really proud of my parents and what they did.

Gary Hughes: 00:28:34 I still am, but everybody in my town where I grew up in the small town where I grew up, everybody's parents worked for the big engineering firm in town or they worked in agriculture and not everybody at that point was a photographer. Photography was still, this is back in the film days and it was very unusual to have parents who did something that like my parents did. It was, and I was really proud of that, but they were wedding photographers and they, in fact they were wedding and portrait photographers, a catchall studio. So they were working nights and weekends a lot, almost all the time. And so if there was a very often football games and Scouts trips or whatever's happening on weekends, I was either working at somebody's wedding at like 12 or 13 years old or my parents were working and we were staying at a friend's house or I was riding with another family to a sporting match or sport balls, sport, whatever was going on of course ball.

Gary Hughes: 00:29:25 And I did play sports. I did but anyway, and so I realized that I did not want that for my kids. And so, and then at the same time we sat down to look at our numbers at the in the fourth quarter of that same year not long before daughter was born and we looked at our numbers and we were spending so much money marketing money and time marketing weddings and portraits. And yet it was about 20, no, I guess it probably about 30% of our business. And we were using about 80% of our marketing bandwidth to market for it. And we looked and realize how much money headshots was bringing in and we weren't even really marketing for it. And so at that moment we made the butt puckering decision to stop doing weddings. It stopped taking, we stopped taking weddings, we stopped taking portrait commissions and we just focused on that other end of our business. And honestly, as scary as it was, it ended up being the best decision we ever made.

Raymond: 00:30:16 Wow. That's insane. That's insane. That's great to hear those. There's a lot there really to to unpack obviously the lessons that you learned and what I love, which I hope people listening pull out of that is that as a photographer you can decide like what you want your life to look at.

Gary Hughes: 00:30:33 Nobody has a business like ours in our area, like not real or they didn't at the time. And people, sometimes they just need permission to know that if you don't want to photograph newborns and weddings, but you want to work in photography, that's possible to do that. If you don't want to do the high touch boutique business model, you don't have to, you can make a living in photography doing other things. We have a commercial portrait studio. I take pictures of people for their jobs and whether that's website images for companies or models and actors or personal branding sessions, or just simple head shots for giant law firms. We, that's what we do. And for the most part, with the [inaudible] occasion, with the exception of the occasional Sunday gig at a conference or something, I work Monday through Friday, 10 to six. Yeah. And I don't edit when I'm at home and I'm off on all holidays and weekends for the most part.

Gary Hughes: 00:31:27 I'm not doing those day after Christmas family sessions. And I'm not saying that any of those things are bad. They just weren't me. I just wasn't happy. And now I'm happy. I come to my studio and I doing work that excites me and it interests me. I have positive interactions. All my interactions with people are professional and not emotional. I'm not emotionally selling. Everything is decided upfront and it just fits me better. And the other stuff didn't fit me well. If that fits you well, then do it. And my, you know, one of my good friends in, in the photography business, Megan DiPiero has a very similar kind of clientele, but she does it in a completely different way. And she is the opposite business for me. And we have talked several times on the subject of don't do the thing that doesn't make you happy. Like if you're going to take the risk of trying to have a business on your own, creating something with your talent and your ambition, you're going to walk away from a corporate job with benefits and stability or at least more stability and you're going to make that sacrifice to do something that you love. Why wouldn't you insist on being happy when you do it? Why wouldn't you insist on doing it in a way that pleases you? It make any sense not to do it that way.

Raymond: 00:32:41 [Inaudible] [inaudible] Yeah. Megan is one of those people who she's, I feel like whenever I, you know, watch her on Facebook, she is a very happy in the work that she's doing. I think she's in Australia right now, which is,

Gary Hughes: 00:32:53 Yes. My my GPS tag on her ear. Actually,

Raymond: 00:32:57 I don't know where she is currently. Oh man. Yeah. You got to get that replaced. Gotta get there. Oh, back to back to head shots though. Head shots are are one of those things that I really don't know much about. It's not something that I do. So in your own words, would you tell me like, what would you say is the description of a headshot photographer? Like, like what is it that you're trying to capture?

Gary Hughes: 00:33:18 Well, if you want to start a fight in a Facebook group, just ask what a headshot is and then you'll get a thousand conflicting opinions for people have no idea what the hell they're talking about because it doesn't matter what you think a headshot is, it matters what your client thinks the headshot is. And so a photographer can book a branding session and make a couple of thousand dollars off of somebody who inquires about a headshot because your consumer is a headshot is a much more of a catchall term for a photographer. A headshot is a commercial portrait of the head and shoulders of a person. It implies that it is for business, that it is for a commercial purposes and that is a head and shoulders usually. Like I call it like nipples up. It's usually like a nipples up photo. I don't say that like in the camera room, but when I'm training other photographers that works for me.

Gary Hughes: 00:34:07 I'm like when take a head shot like nipples top of the head, that's just do all that, leave that in there anyway, so other photographers have very strict and weird definitions of a headshot like has to be lit a certain way and has to have a certain color back around. You can't have a hand in it and you can't, you know, if you show down to below the rib cage, it's no longer a headshot. It doesn't matter. A client calls me for a headshot and they go, they book a headshot session, they go, I also gonna to need a three quarter length photo for a thing that I have coming up. And I go, Oh, this is a head shot. I'm not going below the dimples. No, I take the picture cause they're my client. That's what they want. That's the term that as people use it, a headshot is just a photograph of that person for the purpose, for commercial purposes basically. And so if they want a head to toe full length for a application to the, to the Navy, I'll do that in a headshot session. It doesn't matter. But essentially it's what the client thinks it is, but it's whatever it is, it taking a picture of people for commercial purposes, whatever that, whatever the dimensions of that, whatever body parts you put in it, that's, that's how I look at it now.

Raymond: 00:35:11 Sure, sure. So if, if a headshot is a shot of a head, right whether it includes the, the torso, ribcage, hands, you know, whatever it is, what do you think is the difference between a head shot taken by an amateur, somebody just getting into it versus a head shot taken by a professional?

Gary Hughes: 00:35:30 Probably intention. Knowledge,

Raymond: 00:35:34 I guess. So. So those I think just comes with you know, under the veil of being a professional. But I think from a, from a technical aspect, from a visual point of view, what do you think, what is it about an amateur headshot that stands out to you to make you say, Oh no, this is,

Gary Hughes: 00:35:51 Well, it's not any different than you know, people who are new. First of all, I, I just would like to say that nobody picked up the camera and was amazing right off the bat. Every most photographers, even great ones. Yeah. Just even great photographers still take mostly crappy photos, you know, that's, that's just the way I know very few photographers that don't waste a lot of frames. We all waste frames and so everybody just calm down. We're not curing cancer or putting rockets into space. We're just taking pictures of people's heads. So, but I would like to say that there's nothing different in what's amateurish or what's incorrect in my view about a headshot. Then there's not wrong with any other genre of photography in the same way. The things that I see are they come in stages. The first thing that you really start to understand in photography is the mechanics of your camera.

Gary Hughes: 00:36:40 How to make things work. That exposure triangle, the relationship of the shutter speed to the ISO, to the aperture, to the white balance and all the other things, all the settings you have in your camera and how to make those work. Focal length. You know how to shoot with intent when it comes to using your camera physically. That's like the first thing is getting your camera to work to the point where you don't have to think about it. You're just shooting, right? Like you don't it when it, when operating your camera, a mechanically becomes like riding a bike to where you don't. If you ask somebody, how do you ride a bike? They go like, well, you just sort of sit on it and go. Your camera function comes first and after your camera function then you start looking at your camera and yourself and then you start looking at your subject and then you go, Oh, okay, so now I have to make this person look good.

Gary Hughes: 00:37:29 It's not just about knowing how to get a correct exposure, it's about making this person look good and then usually lighting or posing come next there. Those are two are usually lumped together, so some people will learn and they'll experiment with posing and stuff, but mostly it's finding the light and so usually using to use available light and how that works and some people they discover the the glory of open shade or garage door lighting and and they play with that and then they'll usually say, Oh wow, this looks really cool. If you add another light source to this, and then that comes and then you go, okay, now I can light. Now I understand the mechanics of using that stuff and even adding strobes in there. What about actually making the person look good by how I choose to pose and position them? Then posing usually follows that and so usually Cameron mechanics, lighting, then posing and once all that stuff really starts to fall in place and it becomes second nature to you to work with people in this way, to work with your equipment and you're comfortable with your equipment, you're comfortable, comfortable lighting and posing your subject.

Gary Hughes: 00:38:26 Then really comes interaction with your subject to getting great expression and after you learn to really elicit that because you're confident enough in your fundamentals of photography that now you're more concerned about how the subject looks than you are about getting a good exposure. All that stuff comes, then you're interacting with the subject. Then you are focusing on making their experience goods so that you can elicit an incredible response and get pictures that are more meaningful to the subject because guess what? Your subject doesn't care about lighting, about aperture, about anything. They care. Do I look fat? Do I look tired? Do I look old? How does my hair look? And that's all they care about. And funny enough that that tends to be the last thing that we get into as photographers is like, okay, let's figure out how to make the subject have a great time and look good and feel good while taking the photo.

Gary Hughes: 00:39:19 Cause here's a tip. My friends, do you have an, Oh, do you call your listeners anything like you haven't named for your listening group, the beautiful listeners. All right. Okay, here we go. Beautiful listeners. It is absurd to think that we're more concerned about ourselves than about the subject when we take a photo and if someone has a great time with you photo being photographed by you, they will like pictures that aren't as good if they like you because they had a good time and so that is definitely something to consider. Now moving on from that, then you start to get into things with a real artists. I then think then come things like subject, background, relationship, color, harmony, storytelling, all those things happen once all that other stuff is in the back. When you really notice that somebody really good, not only is it well lit, well posed with a great expression, but then you start to notice that, look at the color palette in that image. Look at the store, look at, look at everything that makes what makes this image impactful goes beyond lighting and posts. And that doesn't happen until you get all of the technical and so if you put those, those things tend to come in that order. Would you agree with that?

Raymond: 00:40:29 Absolutely. Photography is very like a, it's very much a personal thing in the beginning and then it's not until you get somebody else in front of your camera that you realize, Oh, this isn't, this isn't all about me. So yeah, absolutely.

Gary Hughes: 00:40:40 No and and and get your, your, your beautiful listeners shield your tender little artist's heart for for a second. I just want you to do, art is a collaboration. Especially when you're photographing human beings. You are working with a person. That person is not just a subject. That person is your collaborator. Whether it's your client, whether it's a model who you've hired, that person you are using their image for your own artistic gratification and that is something that you should take seriously. And when you start taking that seriously, your work will improve and you will become a better artist.

Raymond: 00:41:19 Yeah. I want to go back to something that that you spoke about earlier, which was like kind of that discovery of lighting, right? Oftentimes, you know, you got a million videos on YouTube. You know, I look at your videos, you've got large umbrellas, you got softboxes, you got all these things. Now, oftentimes new photographers don't have all the gear and resources that professional photographers have. But then you mentioned something there, garage light. I'm really interested to hear about that. Tell me more about garage light and why it's, how we can use it.

Gary Hughes: 00:41:50 Yeah, sure. I mean this is basically, I think garage lighting is, it's a very cool technique to have in your Rolodex. It's not something that you can just make happen, although I guess you can now V flats and such. But essentially what it is is understanding that light has direction, intensity at varying levels and how to corral it. And so a long time ago, a cave man wants to notice that in the opening to the cave whilst looking into the cave, his the cave woman who he was currently living with looked a lot prettier and then chiseled it onto a rock somewhere. And so essentially what garage lighting is, is when the ambient light outside is forced into an opening. It be, it is a very soft and flattering light that is absent of light, that's overhead, which cast a shadow down or lightness that's necessarily coming up from underneath or from any particular direction.

Gary Hughes: 00:42:44 It forces, if you think of like the mouth of a garage essentially as a giant softbox, as long as that lights, that sunlight isn't hitting direct some beans into it. Like if you've got a North facing or South facing opening then you will be able to pretty much anytime of day stick someone just inside the opening of a garage or a doorway or anything like that. And you'll be able to get fantastic flat, soft, flattering life. And this is very, very common in headshot photography, especially with actors and entertainers and models. You see this type of lighting a lot. It's super flattering. It gets rid of a lot of wrinkles and it's just sort of, you don't have to have really any equipment to do it. You've just got to find yourself an opening. And this works under overhangs, out on streets, you know, it works anywhere that you can find.

Gary Hughes: 00:43:33 And a place that corrals the light in more specifically, what you want is something, an overhang of some kind that stops the light coming down. And so all the light is coming from directly in front of the subject as they're facing out from that opening. And that's gently and lovingly called garage light because, well, a lot of photographers have garages. And that's a place where a lot, lot of times we start our studio work. So you open up that garage door, you set somebody about 18 to 24 inches just inside the opening to the garage, and then you can shoot until your heart's content. And they're going to look fantastic most of the time.

Raymond: 00:44:08 That's awesome. That is, that's a great tip. I got to I gotta I gotta practice that. And with the kids outside, I always, yeah, seriously.

Gary Hughes: 00:44:15 I mean it's the same thing like putting your back to a big window or something like that. It's keeping the light source behind you nice and big and soft and flat. And it's just, and the thing that you can find it just about anywhere, anywhere you go. So if you're a looking for good flattering, like that's the way to it, just make sure the real, the key is to have something over top that shields that light from coming down. And then you'll see the only light that's getting in is the light that's hitting someone directly from in front.

Raymond: 00:44:43 So let's, let's talk about a company contacts you, right. Obviously you're not going to say, great, I am, I know the perfect garage. Let's go ahead and bring all the employees into my garage. But when a company does contact you for headshots a D is the first thing that you work on like a concept together or is that, do they just expect you to show up and then you just do your thing and deliver the photos when you're done?

Gary Hughes: 00:45:05 The great part is that people mostly have no idea what they want. They really just, you know, if you're, you have to establish yourself to be a successful business, to be a subject matter expert. And this happens over time. So when you first start out, when you're new, what happens is if you have not yet established your sort of your brand and your style, and that takes time. If you don't have this yet to do not be hard on yourself because this takes time. Once you've established a brand and a style, people start coming to you and asking you for what you do. Until you have a style and a brand established, people come and they ask you to do what they want, does see the difference. So somebody will come to you and they'll bring you a list. They'll bring you a Pinterest board or they'll, and they'll say like, here are, can you do this, this and this and this shot at a wedding.

Gary Hughes: 00:45:52 Like the, the shot with the weird perspective where the bridal part is being crushed by a high heel or whatever. Like people asking for dumb stuff that they saw on Pinterest. I mean every wedding photographer knows that, but people, when most people, when they get a sense that they are in a place where an artist is working or someone who is established, they have enough of a portfolio and a reputation, you're not going to, you become an altar, you become an artist rather than someone who's just fulfilling. Even in a commodity business. Like my clients will go to my websites, go to our social media, see their portfolio, and they will book me because they like what I do and they want me to do my thing for them. And so for the most part, my clients will be, will totally trust me and they'll say, I've seen your portfolio.

Gary Hughes: 00:46:38 You obviously know what you're doing. Just do it for me. Can I have a gray background or something like that. But there is always a discovery process to where I don't necessarily want someone to come in and to be subject to whatever my emotional whims are that day. So I definitely think that in every photo shoot you need to have a very robust discovery process with your client to make sure that you are setting the expectations. And if you have a great discovery process before the shoot, you're gonna have a lot less buyers or more. So you're gonna have a lot less people upset, you're going to have a lot less reshoots, you're gonna have a lot. Oh, you're gonna have a lot fewer problems, you know, than you are if you just show up and shoot Willy nilly. Set those expectations, find out what the client wants, meet them somewhere between your vision and what they're expecting.

Gary Hughes: 00:47:24 And so corporate clients contact me and mostly they all want the same thing. They want a headshot basically, mostly Flatlight on a white or gray background. That's about 75% of what I shoot. However, I do photograph a lot of actors, entertainers and models and I do try to get on the same page with them. I have to shoot what's expected in my market, in my genre, but I also have to do it in a way that I like to do it. And so, you know, asking those questions, finding that out, that's all really, really important stuff. But the more you establish yourself and your style and your brand, the less that people are going to ask you to do anything except for what it is that you do. So if you are a really good business person, one of the best things that you can do, especially if you're a boutique photography business, is to establish a very specific style that is very recognizable to the client. And then they will, people who love your style will be the ones reaching out to you. And all they're going to want you to do is to execute your vision for them. Now, if you have, if you're just a photographer who, a person who has a nice camera and shoots whatever people want, people are going to treat you like someone with a nice camera who shoot whatever they want. And that's the way that everybody operates in the beginning. And it takes while to establish your style. It really does.

Raymond: 00:48:38 Yeah, that's a, that's a hard thing to, to figure out. That's a hard thing to communicate, I think to many, many new photographers that they want to have that look and it just, it just takes time. And it's not something that you can curate on your own. It's not, you can just,

Gary Hughes: 00:48:51 I believe that like it, you'll find it, you'll find it and when you find it, it'll click and [inaudible]. The thing is that you may not even realize that you found it.

Raymond: 00:49:00 Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. There are so many photographers who, they'll send me photos like, Hey, can you like look at these photos or whatever, and I'll look at them and say to myself like, you know, in my head it's very consistent. They're doing a great job. And then when I will tell them that their first reaction is always like, Oh, I don't have a style. I didn't think I had a style. Like as you said, it just comes out of you.

Gary Hughes: 00:49:20 Yeah, it is. It is. It is a mystery not that much for mystery. Just make sure that if you're doing photography as a business, if that's your intention, then bring some intent to that style. Evaluate your images and send your images to other people to be evaluated. Think about what it is that you are trying, what emotions you're trying to elicit and approach your work with purpose and your style will sort of evolve out of that. And eventually it'll become so obvious what your style is that other people will just ask for your style and they'll stop asking you to imitate other people.

Raymond: 00:49:55 So coming up with that quote unquote style obviously comes as you said, with practice, doing it over a long period of time. And in something like high volume headshots, I mean, I'm sure that there's Raymond: 00:50:07 What would you say is probably the most amount of headshots that maybe you've done in a day?

Gary Hughes: 00:50:10 In a day? I dunno. Probably 500 or so.

Raymond: 00:50:17 500 head shots. Okay. Wow. I was not expecting that. Okay. 500 heads. If

Gary Hughes: 00:50:21 You shoot all day, you're going to shoot somewhere and it's normal to shoot between 150 and 250 in a day. 500 would be a big job where I think we shot, I worked for a Sam's club one time and we shot 1200 in two days.

Raymond: 00:50:37 Okay. Okay. So, okay. 500 [inaudible].

Gary Hughes: 00:50:40 That's about it. That's not that big of a deal. Ask any school photographer. Oh no, I'm sure you know what I mean?

Raymond: 00:50:46 I'm sure. So this, that's, that's where this high volume thing obviously comes in, right? So there's a lot of differences between weddings and headshots. The biggest I would say is probably price right? On the surface. The biggest one is the pricing of wedding dress. Right. And in that unfortunately as well. So how do you price something like that 500 headshots?

Mid Roll: 00:51:08 You are listening to the free version of the beginner photography podcast where each week you learn how world-class photographers see and capture the world around them. If you want to hear the extended interview with their best business tips to learn how to make money with your camera and then become a premium member today by heading over to beginner photography, podcast.com and click the premium membership button to join now.

Raymond: 00:51:32 That is such an exciting idea. I have to tell you that that is such an exciting idea to have a to have that and I'm writing it down right now because that's just one of those things that I will make sure that the cut is a, I'll make it 6% cause I really appreciate that idea. Yeah. I mean that's something that I don't think, I think why that would work is because nobody wants to put in the work to make that happen.

Gary Hughes: 00:51:58 Nobody wants to see a business where you don't, where you weren't the artist.

Raymond: 00:52:03 Right. Right. And there's so much potential there, there's so much potential there. That's definitely something

Gary Hughes: 00:52:07 Go of being the artist, be the hardest on your own damn time. Would you rather be the artist on your own time and have your business bring in loads of money that you can, you know, send your kids to college and own your house outright? Like all that stuff is possible.

Raymond: 00:52:22 Yeah. So when, okay, let's, I got a sub daydreaming there for a second because some of those figures that you threw out was a really exciting to think about. When, let's, let's get back to head shots and talk about the studio aspect of things. Right. Do you, would you say that you need to have a studio or some sort of large location to start shooting head shots or even just to be taken seriously as a professional?

Gary Hughes: 00:52:47 No, I don't think so. It will, it will, it will hurt you not to have a little bit, not to have a place for people to go. There are certain areas of the business that are going to be different, more difficult. For example, I have about a dozen different companies that we shoot for regularly where we photograph all their new hires and so they don't want me, I don't want to go out to their office and set up a studio once a month just to photograph one person. I don't want to do that, you know? However you can cater to companies. It's like we have 15 or 20 employees and you can be a concierge business where you go out to their business and photograph them there. Most businesses prefer that when you get into that number of people. So there will be certain things that you aren't able to do.

Gary Hughes: 00:53:29 However, if you get a good relationship going with a another studio or a rental studio in your area, before I had a studio, I actually had a place that we rented from and I would charge if the, if the client insisted that if they don't have a location for me to come shoot at and they need a studio, I charged a studio fee. And so I would just rent a place as I needed it for stuff like that. So if they want to come into the studio, I would charge whatever it is, you know, for a two hour session. And you can rent a studio for 50 bucks an hour and I would charge $150 studio fee. And now since I have my own studio, I charge a location fee. You know, like it's not, it doesn't mean it. Whatever everybody else is doing, it doesn't matter whether I'm making money matters.

Gary Hughes: 00:54:12 And so, and that's you, you can run, I know plenty of photographers run a very successful business out of their home. Some of them have even, you know, built extra space in their home into a perfectly fine working studio. There's no problem. Let me tell you, it's not like you're going to have bride Zillow's in this business that are going to stop by and kick your door down. You're talking about people's head shots. Nobody gets super emotional about this, you know, for the most part. So, you know I ran my studio of, I ran my business out of my home for the first six and a half years we were in business and I've had a studio for the last five and and it's, I've done it successfully both ways. I like having a studio. I like having my work away from my house. I like going home and not having, not being, having the ability to work. That's cool too. So that's good. But that's me. I like to get up and get dressed and go to work in the morning. I don't love working at home. It's too, there's too much distraction. I have nothing here at the studio except the ability to do work if I'm not doing work here or if I'm not focused, I'm not getting anything done. I just go home. Just go home. Yeah.

Raymond: 00:55:18 That's very cool. As somebody with a three year old who's out there right now, probably on her iPad at any moment, you could come in here and tell me the chances.

Gary Hughes: 00:55:24 Thank God for the iPad man. Cause I've got a five year old, a two year old and a five month old and when you need it, when you need a minute and iPad is exempt. We go out. We went out to Dell, we went to Epcot the other day and we went, we're getting out. The kids are tired, we're getting, we're going to have some food before we drive home. So we sit down at a restaurant and the kids were a little fussy and wild and I was just, there was a phone just shut up for five minutes so daddy could have a margarita.

Raymond: 00:55:49 This is my minute. Mom and dad have 10 minutes together. I just dragged you around. Ed Scott for nine hours. He upset about daddy wants some chips and salsa and a dos Equis. Please just watch YouTube for a second. Enjoy Peppa pig. Yeah, this is what you're going to do right now. My kids go way down weird YouTube holes and like my two year olds watching like weird videos for kids in Japanese and stuff. It's bizarre like how you know how she finds it crazy. My son just found the podcast the other day on YouTube and he was blown away. Daddy's famous. Yeah. He's like, why are you on YouTube? Like, what is this? He was so confused. I was like, well, this is how I make money. So yeah. Very interesting. Yeah.

Gary Hughes: 00:56:29 Yeah. That's the other thing too, is once my daughter who's five, once she was six, six, or seven months old, my wife used to come to the studio and work with me and we would just set a right here on the desk in her little carrier and she would just, and once she became sitting up crawling around and stuff, that had to end that my wife stays at home and I work in the studio because you're not going to get anything done with toddlers around, so I almost need a studio.

Raymond: 00:56:52 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Sometimes I feel bad about the amount of things that I can't get done with with kids at home. And then I just think to myself, for years, healthy babies are good, good at such a good price. I've sold at least two a mine. I have five kids out there somewhere. They're listening right now with a tear in their eyes. Okay. You know what? Poor kids, poor kids. I feel bad because I know that, I know that we're going over on time. So I got one last question here for you before I let you go. You got time? I do. Okay. One thing that we have not talked about, we've talked about lighting, we've talked about location, we've talked a lot about business and how to make a multiple six figure business. That's pretty much all automated, which is super awesome. But the one thing that we haven't really talked about is posing so much now when it comes to posing, there's really just a ton of different ways that you could pose a human being when somebody sits down in front of your camera, what is your approach? What's the first thing that you do with them?

Gary Hughes: 00:57:53 First thing that I do is when someone sits down, I will usually spend five to 10 minutes moving around, fiddling with lights and chatting with them, testing lights. And, and part of it is to make sure that everything's working okay. But really what I want to do is I want them to sit there for a few minutes and unwind and then you'll see probably about half the time people will put themselves into a pretty natural position. So rule number one is if somebody is doing something right, don't change it. Don't pose somebody just because you feel like you should do some posing. Sometimes good posing is not changing something that's working already. And so you find that people will very often do interesting things, especially for like editorial portraiture. And I remember that I was photographing an event the F a headshot for charity event and there were all these donors to our local our local art museum. And there was an older gentleman, he was an interesting guy, had a nice blazer and an Ascot and things and cool framed glasses kind of that, that like artistic type almost that John Waters kind of a look and

Raymond: 00:58:59 Oh, that's going to be me. I love them.

Gary Hughes: 00:59:00 And he was sitting back and like, and he and I would be looking around at the people waiting to be photographed and he would doing like the most interesting stuff while he was just sitting there. And then I go, that's the pose I want in hand. Because when he sees that or when his wife sees that they're gonna, that's gonna, that's gonna feel like him and everybody has like that. So people will have certain smiles or looks or ways of sitting or ways of standing or ways of folding their arms or ways of leaning on something that is them. And if you take a photograph to someone and it feels really natural, then it's going to look great. There are definitely things that you're going to need to do to flatter people and to make them look better. But probably step one is watch, talk to somebody and watch them and see what they do. And if, and just in case they might do something interesting or they might do something right or they might do something really authentic and then, and then photograph that and even just tweak it a little. If you have to and then they're gonna, they're gonna really like it. And I've taken some of my favorite portraits of people like that. Just watching them and letting the first picture I take be something that is something that they did on their own while they thought that I was distracted doing something else.

Raymond: 01:00:13 Is the hands something that you, that you deal with often? Cause obviously at a wedding the first thing I always hear is what do I do with my hands?

Gary Hughes: 01:00:20 Yeah. People ask the same question when you're photographing their headshot and I go, you know, I'll usually, it depends on what it is. It really, really depends on what it is. Hands can can add a lot of story to an image, but they can also look really weird and janky. So hands are, you know, usually minimized or controlled or are usually the way to go with hands. But it's just going to completely depend on what you're going for in a picture. I some, I get a lot of photos with hands in them and my rule is if the hands are near the face, don't put any weight on them cause it squishes the face, you know? And so usually it's just touching rather than like, you know, squishing and you just have to develop by practicing. One of the things that I recommend that people do is, you know, create a Pinterest board of poses for, it's for different genres.

Gary Hughes: 01:01:07 And I have, I have about a dozen Pinterest boards that I go to. I have female model poses, male model poses, business head shots, and I bring in work from all these great photographers and I just look at what they're doing. And I will use that as a jumping off point, not necessarily to emulate it, although emulation isn't a bad way to practice. But once you sort of shoot a thing and you try a thing and you find your own way to do it, you'll start to increase the amount of poses that you know. You'll have your Rolodex of GoTo poses in your head and you'll say, and you'll know when you see it, you'll know when to bust one out and you go, yeah. And then you'll always have things to fall back on. Not everything that you do is going to be an original idea every time it's okay to have fallback poses, but the more of those you have, the better your work will appear in the more diverse

Raymond: 01:01:54 I, I know that a lot of people are really gonna get a lot from that right there, that not every idea that you have has to be like really original, especially when it comes to poses. That's something very hard to, to figure out. So personally, I have to thank you for for sharing that. I have to thank you for sharing everything that you did today. We've, we've gone much longer than our 60 minutes that we had talked about, but I really do appreciate it. And before I let you go, can you let the listeners know where they can find out more about you and what it is that you're doing online?

Gary Hughes: 01:02:25 Absolutely. Beautiful listeners, if you are into podcasts this is a great podcast, but also I cohost a podcast with my good friend who, Ray Perry. It's a weekly podcast called the photo bomb podcast and it is essentially, it's not super educational, it's more like two people who happen to be professional photographers sit down to kind of discuss their week. It's more like a drive time radio program with a host happened to be photographers and we also cover some whatever kind of interesting stories or in the photography news that week. And so you can find that on iTunes, Stitcher pocket cast anywhere. It's just the photo on podcast or you go to photo bomb podcast.com and listen, you can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Gary Hughes. I'm easy to find. I've had that handle for since Twitter became Twitter and on Instagram at near use official. And my business is huge fear ready photography and it's at use fee already on Instagram or [inaudible] dot com and that's it.

Raymond: 01:03:20 Perfect. There's going to be links to everything in the show notes as well. And Gary, once again, I have to say thank you so much for coming on and sharing everything that you did and I look forward to keeping up with you and those future children that come out of the woodwork.

Gary Hughes: 01:03:32 No, no. Denied, denied, denied. Hey, thanks for having me. And so it was a lot of fun.

Raymond: 01:03:40 I hope that you had as much fun listening to that interview with Gary as I as I had actually talking with Gary. Gary is a a, it's just a fun dude you know, really easy to talk to and obviously very knowledgeable when it comes to the world of not only photography but specifically headshot photography. You know, he, he does it quite often. He teaches it. So in that comes through very clear. It's obvious why he is a you know, a very powerful educator and that is because his experience and his way to just explain concepts in a very you know, just break it down in a very easy to understand manner. My biggest takeaway from this episode was, and I hope that, I hope that this really resonated with you as well. We didn't really spend too much time on it, but it just, that Gary, you know, it took him a long time to find his own voice.

Raymond: 01:04:30 He grew up in a family of photographers and Gary's still was just like [inaudible] not, not interested, not interested. And it took him decades to find his voice and what it was that he wanted to focus on. You know, he had, he had no intentions of becoming a photographer and it wasn't until he came back, he essentially had to learn it all, you know, from scratch, having gone to weddings, he just kind of stood there and, you know, held lights and stuff. And as a kid, I can tell you, you know, as, as I said, you don't really pick up on, on, on the things that are important in that situation. So again, really having to relearn what it was that that Gary wanted to do. So that was just, that was just awesome. It's never too late. It's never too late. Whatever your circumstances are, you can do it. If it's it is that that you want to do. So. All right. That's that's it for this episode. I hope that you enjoyed my interview with Gary Hughes until next week. I want you to make, do, I want you to get out. I want you to make more, I want you to do more and I want you to make, do with the gear that you got because I promise you it's better than you think. So that's it. I'll talk to you soon.

Outtro: 01:05:37 Thank you for listening to the beginner photography podcast. If you enjoy the show, consider leaving a review in iTunes, keep shooting, and we'll see you next week.