We Made Legal Heads Roll

Well, heads as in headshots.

Recently, we had the great opportunity to meet all of the lawyers with a very large law firm, Meyers, Nave, Riback, Silver & Wilson (more affectionately referred to as Meyers Nave). The expertise of this organization was an education for me-public law. They represent airports, cities, schools, public power companies, and on it goes. As part of developing their website and printed materials, Meyers Nave wanted to have headshots of all their attorneys...and this is OUR area of expertise.

This project translated into: Have camera, light meters, reflective screens, softboxes, posing knowledge, multiple lights, power packs and backdrops-will travel. And I REALLY traveled. This firm has offices in many locations around the State of California, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Oakland, Santa Rosa, San Francisco, all of which we visited!

For the photographs we made, regardless of locations, the key requirement is to keep the look and feel consistent. Consistency is absolute in importance, in the area of branding and marketing. This meant reproducing the same backdrop and the style of head placements over a period of many months.

I’ll share a trick when photographing faces to make the subjects appear younger (less wrinkles), and avoid the reflections of light on the retinas of their eyes. If you can, take the pictures near a large light source, such as a large window that has sunlight shining indirectly in or perhaps on a cloudy day. A simple way to avoid the retinal reflections is to avoid using a small light light source (i.e. direct camera flash).

Our thanks to Meyers Nave for selecting us as their photographer. And I’ll share a little-known secret I learned through this project about lawyers...they do smile!!

— Michael Soo