Head Shots SUCK! | Okotoks Photographer

Head shots… YUCK!  I’ll be honest when ever I get asked to do head shots the first thing I picture is gauging my own eyes out with a rusty spoon.  Seriously they just aren’t me.  The idea of just me and a person standing there, trying to be natural, but posed is straight up PAINFUL.  It’s not why I take pictures.  I take pictures to tell a story, capture a memory, to MEAN something.  Without the meaning and the story I’d rather be doing pretty much anything else.  That means I don’t really do head shots. I don’t do glamour photography, I don’t do boudoir and hell I don’t even do newborns the way most people do.  Me and one person on their own = not a chance in hell.

Enter Shannon of Nickels & Linc… aka my buddy and the ridiculous talent who jazzed up this here website.  She was all “Dude, I need good head shots” I was all “OHHH HELLS NO!” and then she was like “but not like that, like photos that tell people all about who I am, what’s important to me and most importantly WHO is most important to me… you know why I do what I do” … “alright, I’ll bite let’s chat”.

You see Shannon get’s “it” she knows that as creatives we aren’t just selling a website or a photograph we are selling ourselves, our vision, our spin on things.  That people aren’t buying just a site from her they are buying  her vision of a site for them.  Yes that does sound corny and ridiculous but it’s true. So suck it, and deal with my corny self for just a few moments.

When someone get’s a family session with me they aren’t just getting pictures that anyone can take.  They are getting the way I SEE THEIR FAMILY.  No one else see’s your family the way I do, it’s my job to make sure that I find all the hidden little bits of awesome in your family and bring them out to show them to you.  It’s my job to find the real you hidden behind the fake smile you’re attempting to give me while you worry if your chins are out to play.  Ya know what I’m saying.  As soon as Shannon (or Shambo as I like to call her) told me that she wanted me to tell her story, with her family at her Grandparents acreage where she grew up I was in.  So we got to scheming, she brought a long a few of her favourite things and of course her favourite people and this is what we came up with.

Head shots or not I’m fucking stoked to show you Shambo.  This is who she is, this is her family, this is why she does what she does.  These photos are a piece of her, of how I see her anyway.

 

Now if you ask me, these images tell me all I need to know about Shannon.  Don’t you think?

If you want to hear how it went down from Shambo’s side, and find out more on how to rock a great about page check out out her take here or just go check out her awesome about page.