What are headshots?

The purpose of a head shot is to get a professional image of the persons head, where the focus is only of them. They are often used to convey professionalism.

They are mainly used for politics and people of status, or more commonly Instagram and the social media profile pictures.

Henry Mullins

Henry Mullins is one of the most famous photographers represented in the Societe Jersiase Photo-Archive, producing over 9,000 portraits of islanders from 1852 to 1873 at a time when the population was around 55.000.

Mullins was famous for his “Diamond Cameo” he would print a Diamond shape cameo on his Carte de visite to show four different angles of a person, with almost one different card.

My Diamond Cameo

In photoshop I made 4 ovals and put them into the form of a diamond. then I dragged the 4 images on top of the ovals, then made them a clipping mask so that they went into the oval. Then a found a vintage background on Google and made it the background and also put a copy on top. The copy on top I changed the layer style and made the opacity 50 so that the pattern would be on top of the images as well.

Double / Muti Exposures

Double or multiple exposures are an illusion created by layering images (or parts of images) over the top of each other. This can be achieved in the camera settings, or on Adobe Photoshop by creating layers and then using blending options and opacity control. Artist have used these techniques to explore unique ideas and evoke dream-like imagery, or imagery that explores time / time lapse.

Alexander Rodchenko

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Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was a Russian artist, sculptor, photographer and Graphic Designer.

He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design; he was married to the artist Varvara Stepanova.

This is his work in the style of double exposure. He used 2 photos the create the effect. the layer on top is slightly transparent so that you can see the layer behind it.

My Attempt

I edited this image with Photoshop, and used several photo which I took in the studio.

I used multiple photos and layered them over each other making the eyes the main point where I aligned them, this made a blur effect for everything else.

This worked out well, and is in the style of Alexander Rodchenko, it created a unique effect where it messes with the viewers perception of the image as there isn’t a plain, simple face, unless you squint your eyes.

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Left Image:

I love how the colours mix giving off a haze of lighter tones in the background.

It uses 2 different images, both use 2 point lighting, using a red light and a white light to create a half and half coloured image.

I used one of the eyes to line them up and put the top image on a 50% opacity to see through to the background image.

Overall, i think that the white light, create a nice highlight which bring out the details on the face. This is also where the main overlay is, so it put a bigger emphasis on the multi-exposure aspect.

Right