The Headshot Intensive with Peter Hurley

I’ve personally worked hard to branch out into other skills sets like photography. This expansion isn’t solely for enjoyment, it’s because I feel great photography can help all businesses and bring joy to your life. Our company believes strongly that the visuals are as important as the product’s quality. Our company’s graphic designer and creative officer has helped me fall in love with all things creative, including photography. In a previous article I mentioned the importance of professional photography as a strong foundation in your online world and thus have strived to gain knowledge in the field of photography. A major step in doing so was attending “The Headshot Intensive” with world renowned headshot photographer Peter Hurley.

In this post I’d like to share with you that experience, some tricks learned, headshots I took, and some behind the scenes photos and videos.

Who is Peter Hurley?

Peter Hurley, a leading headshot artist for actors, celebrities and executives, is all about expressions. He will often comment on photographs with two extremes. Either the person looks “cool”, or looks “out to lunch.” An example of cool can be found by Googling Brad Pitt. But to explain “out to lunch” you’ll need to picture an individual who is uncomfortable, lacking of expression, and not much different to a “deer in the headlights.” He’s said that “people look like badly embalmed cadavers because they try to pose, but lack the skill to look natural doing it.” This is what he teaches and hopefully what I have learned: to help the people look real.

As you’ll see in my photos below the subjects look comfortable even though I’ve directed them into an unnatural posture. An example of this unnatural posture is when we direct the subject to bring their forehead forward toward the camera. From the side these turtle like poses are ridiculous but from the camera, amazing. For shots from the side he taught us to direct the subject to bring their ear toward the camera.

Here are some of my raw shots from the weekend as well as behind the scenes photos, video and 360 virtual tour of me getting my head shot taken by Peter Hurley.

Inside A Peter Hurley Headshot

360 virtual tour – click on the image below, hold and slowly drag your cursor.

Full Screen

Behind the Scenes Videos

The making of – The Elevator Incident

Raw Headshots

Behind the Scenes Photos

Here is a glimpse from behind the scenes; the headshot workshop, all of us getting trapped in an elevator, meals and experiences captured via my iPhone.