BOOM! Headshot.

The picture above is one of the two headshots I ended up with. It ain’t too shabby, if I do say so myself (although friends and family have, of course, vehemently disagreed.) And I’ll admit--it went through a professional “retouching” process to make it look better than it normally would. The results are impressive, especially when you consider that this was the original.

I had reservations about the entire process, as I mentioned in a previous post. I’d been told I was an actor, which was a fishy proposition from the get-go. But getting headshots was a whole other level of insanity. I was already part of the hordes of aspiring Hollywood writers infesting LA’s bars and coffee shops. Did I really want to add aspiring actor to the mix?

But ultimately, I decided to accept the very real risk that I was being a rube and just go with it. For a little variety, I brought a couple of my best-looking shirts (i.e. clean ones, with buttons).

So, at six o’clock on the dot, I took a deep breath and stepped into the studio. Seven faces stared questioningly back at me.

“Uh…hi,” I said, clutching my shirts closer for protection. No one said anything.

“I’m here for the…” Headshots? Photo shoot? Pictures? What could I say that would make me sound knowledgeable? Like I knew exactly what I was doing?

“…To get my…um…headshot...pictures?” 

Smooth.

“Oh, we’re having a crazy day,” said the receptionist, indicating the rest of the people in the room who were also waiting for headshots. “We’re running about an hour behind. Can you come back at seven?”

The last thing an indecisive person needs is another hour to think about it. But I came back. They were still behind, and so the shoot actually started somewhere around 7:30.

I told the photographer that I had no idea what I was doing, and he explained that there were basically three types of headshots: serious, grinning, and smiling. So we’d do some of each. The problem was the white undershirt I was wearing. It was too reflective, and it’d be distracting.

“Can you pull the shirt down and put an arm on the table, so you look relaxed?”

The answer was an unequivocal no, but I did my best. One arm was on the table in front of me—the other was desperately clutching my shirt, trying to pull it down.

“Great,” said my photographer as he took shot after shot. “That’s great. Very nice. Pull your shirt down.”

We took about 250 shots. The entire process took about a half hour, but at least ten of those minutes were spent struggling with my shirt. We boiled those shots down to the best two. No one seems to like the one I posted above, but I think it’s better than the other “grinning” version.

Interestingly enough, I did get a chance to ask the studio about my shady casting company. I asked if they’d ever heard of them, and to my surprise, they said they’d had. “They’re not a scam,” I was told. “They’re just not very good.”

Fortunately I have other options. There are a couple casting websites I can put my headshots on, and there are other agencies out there. So who knows? One day, you might see me on TV! In the background. Probably trying to pull my shirt down.