User Experience: Feeling Comfortable in Front of the Camera

Making it easy to get company headshots

The most important part of my job is helping my clients feel comfortable in front of the camera. Almost everyone feels anxiety in front of the camera with the lens pointing at you and the lights flashing. It’s an intimidating experience, especially when trying to relax and express yourself in your professional headshots.

I try not to let my geeky side take control, but I’m really excited about upgrading my lighting to LED.

Upgrading my lighting has made the headshot experience more relaxing and enjoyable, and that helps people look and feel more confident in their headshots. Until last year I’d been working with traditional photography lighting, as you see in this photo of my studio.

Strobe lights are big and the flash is disconcerting.

These strobe lights are enormous, intimidating black boxes that would explode with light in my clients’ faces whenever I took a photo. It was very intimidating for customers and made feeling comfortable in front of the camera very difficult.

Making your people feel comfortable in front of the camera is my most important job.

LED lights are smaller, promote more interaction adn stay on all the time. No explosion of light when the photographer triggers the shutter.

It’s all about the user experience.

I recently began working with LED lighting. Everyone loves it. People tell me it’s easier to focus on my coaching without the flash of the lights going off all the time.

I like it because there’s no longer a barrier separating me from my clients. I can work closer and more directly with them, and they feel much more comfortable and confident in following my coaching.

Technology is great when It makes things better.

I’m glad to have made the change, and I look forward to doing an even better job of creating spectacular company headshots in the future.

This is only one of the changes I'm working on. Check back soon to see what other tricks I have up my sleeve.

Dean-

Dean Birinyi is an award-winning photographer, founder, and owner of Silicon Valley Headshots and Professional Headshots Palo Alto. He specializes in expression coaching to guide his customers on presenting themselves as confident, approachable professionals ready for the next opportunity.

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