I’d guess we’re evaluating shots for an online dating profile.
I always thought a headshot was supposed to highlight the head. In both of these we see almost the whole woman. Whatever happened to leaving a little mystery?
Since you all stole my shooting in the head jokes, I’ll fall back to pointing out the the images are named KatHSexample.jpg and KatHSexample2.jpg. Heh.
Okay, the real-life answers:
These are exactly what I said they were: professional headshots; nothing to do with dating sites (come on, who expends that much analysis on a dating site?). And not a psych experiment, although it seems that’s what I ended up with…
Showing both photos to locals here in the industry, the response to both was overwhelmingly positive. Here, the response to both is overwhelmingly negative; and not only that, but for the most part rather than focusing on what I asked for (what kind of personality do you get from these?), I get: my clothes suck, my hair sucks, my eyes suck (dude, seriously… yes, I have large eyes. I can’t make them smaller, that’s the genetic hand I was dealt). Locals think I look relaxed, upbeat, and someone they’d want to work with; people here think I look forced, unnatural, and high-strung.
These photos were actually taken when I was playing for the camera, doing a little tongue-in-cheek sexy dance and pretty much laughing at myself. I couldn’t be more relaxed and comfortable if I tried.
So really, I think this became more about the culture and attitudes here than about the photos, unfortunately. The split in positive/negative attitudes were right down the line between populations.
The few useful things I got:
Thanks for confirming my eyes look a little extra red. I thought so too, but wasn’t sure if I was being overly nitpicky and would be the only one to notice. Since someone else did, I’ll be making sure to ask the photographer to touch that up.
“Too thin” – hey, I’ll take it. I spent most of my life as the fat girl, if I’ve finally gotten to the point where someone at last thinks I’m too skinny, I believe I’ve finally gotten myself to that middle ground where most think I look great, and there are a few outliers on either side who think I’m too fat/too thin.
Most of you nailed the age, so that’s cool.
A number of SAG actors I know here use 3/4 length headshots, so I’m not worried about that. If it works for union actors, I imagine it’ll work for me.
BTW, I had a flip hairstyle a couple years ago, and it looked like shit, and was impossible to manage – the curls went everywhere. I couldn’t even get it to do the cute tousled look – it just looked like a mess. I was so glad when it finally grew long enough to look good again.
I assume by locals you meant people in your real life. Which would know that you were the person in the pics. Can you really expect honesty when asking someone for feedback on pictures of yourself. For the most part human beings are polite and kind and don’t want to necessarily be frank to your face.
However you throw some photos of an unknown person to the teeming millions, I would expect that you will get more honest feedback.
Answering before the responses can pollute my answer.
I think the same thing about both photos. Woman, late 30s, a bit of a quirky personality. That’s it.
I thought it was about hunting, too. I’ve been in Minnesota too long.
Yeah, I knew someone would come back with this.
I asked people who:
–all work in the industry, mostly actors, some creative directors/casting directors
–range in their knowledge of me from knowing me well, and we’re friends, to knowing me by sight and that’s about it
–are all professionals, and know that telling me a headshot is great, when it isn’t, doesn’t help me.
Obviously no one can completely escape their biases, but if I have to rely on someone’s bias, I think I’ll go with people who are familiar with industry standards in the market I’m working in.
I was honestly just hoping that the people here could see there way clear to step back from their own biases, and actually answer the questions I asked. Keep in mind, I didn’t ask anyone what they thought of my hair.
You asked for answers to your questions. Others-- including me, I apologize-- offered an opinion on the headshots. We’re all unbiased, we didn’t know the subject of the photos, nor that they were your photos.
BTW, if you think we were biased (how?), you assumed that we weren’t professionals familiar with the industry standards of the market you’re working in. Of course, you didn’t ask us for our professional opinions!
People who know you in real life say that they like the pictures, but people who don’t know you personally have negative reactions to them? What does that suggest to you?
But you don’t LOOK relaxed or comfortable. The pictures simply aren’t conveying what you want them to convey. The message you think you’re sending doesn’t always equal the message that is received.
Say what?
No, you got a lot more useful things than that. Things you can apply when you get the headshots redone.
What does your agent think of them?
To me, the second photo makes you look older. There is less fill lighting, so the angles of your face are more apparent. Sadly, it also darkens your eyes giving them a sunken look and accents the bags under your eyes. The second photo looks like someone who is older, wiser, thinner, and more weary than the first photo.
I will answer without reading anyone else’s responses because people always say things in a more intelligent way and more perceptively than I and I would want to copy what they said.
Both photos: attractive young woman, 30 to 35.
first photo
personality: happy, relaxed, confident.
thinking: enjoying my photo session.
second photo
personality: sassy, mischievous
thinking: i’m about to play a trick on you, you won’t see this coming!
(P.S. can’t explain why but the person looks slightly older in the second photo)
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in case these are photos of you, you could submit them to the SDMB Picture gallery
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Looks very mischievious and witty and fun.
Could be anywhere between 30 and 45 (I’m really bad at ages)
Looks like she is thinking of something very naughty! (not necessarily sexual)
Why not write down the points picked up by people here and take them to your photographer and ask if he/she thinks the individual comments could be valid?
Although I did pick up about your hair, I tried to put my point across in a way that really highlighted to me your apparent appearence of self consciousness about it. -The fact that you kept half of it behind your head. I prolly shouldn’t have said it looked lifeless.
The tilted head and rounded shoulders seemed to me to be demure. Would the photographer not agree? I wasn’t criticising the neutral coloured conservative top in and of its self but felt that as it was not flattering to you and so perhaps you were not really interested in the shoot. I tried to keep my comments on what I felt was projected as opposed to my take on you physically.
I wanted to add, but didn’t, a comment on the technical aspect of the photographer’s style. You didn’t ask for that type of comment. But I will now because you say its a professional shoot. Why would he use such harsh lighting on someone with your colour of hair and a large area of exposed pale skin? It didn’t bring out the best in you.
Can you give us some specific comments that your peers said about the pictures? I would be interested in what the industry itself defines as acceptable or positive.
Actually, I did assume you’d be unbiased with regards to my personality. What I didn’t expect was all the negativity around my hair and clothing and how “crazy” I am. :rolleyes: Since I didn’t ask those questions, I didn’t think I’d be getting “answers” on them. My bad, I was mistaken.
I didn’t feel a need to be specific that they were my photos, since again I didn’t want to influence perceptions on my personality. Not that any of you know much about me from my screen name, but some of you might have formed an opinion of some sort.
Bottom line, most of the responses weren’t useful to me because they didn’t answer the questions I asked. The responses by and large ranged from irrelevant to the question, to deliberately provocative.
For those of you who did answer the questions, thank you.
Thank you, this is exactly what I was looking for. And yes, I promised I’d get this to you as soon as it’s finished, so I will! 
I’ve already discussed several possible choices with him. He agreed with me that these two were among the strongest shots.
It’s fine, none of this offended me, it just didn’t give me the info I was looking for. My hair is behind one shoulder because I was moving at the time.
“Demure” is a heckuva lot different from “self-conscious.”
Although yes, my concern for this one was that I appeared shy. I ended up discussing this in depth with someone who reads people for a living and she said that she didn’t necessarily see “shy” but that it could be coy or flirtatious… so ultimately I think a lot of what people will get from it is what they bring to it.
Neither of these have been retouched yet. I only get one retouched as part of the package, so I’ve been trying to make up my mind prior to doing that.
The basics are that they need to look like you, the best you that there is. There is a lot of commercial work here, so agents like to see smiles with teeth, so they can see if you scrunch up your eyes or not (scrunching is bad). In general, hard focus on the eye closest to the camera.
Also, a pretty big thing, is that they like to see your personality, and they like to see that there’s something going on behind your eyes. Blank “smile for the camera” expressions don’t work.
As for specific responses:
Prior to narrowing it down to two:
“So many of these are wonderful; your eyes are gorgeous!”
“These are fantastic. Seriously. I wanted to make notes on the ones I liked best but I ended up with so many!”
[both from professional actors]
Between the two:
“There’s more going on in your eyes in this one [photo 1].”
“Relaxed, confident, outgoing.”
“I really like #1 - go with that. There’s something very endearing and sensual about it at the same time.”
“#1 has a shy, girlish sexyness to it. I like it as a photo, but not as your main headshot. I’m not sure this is the best way to go with agents, etc. Unless this is exacly what you want to convey. #2 has a vibrant freedom quality. i like this one a lot. Your smile is great and it shows a great personality, someone upbeat that I would want to work with.”
I also got a lot of “Wow, these are both great, I can’t make up my mind. Who’s your photographer?”
They’re less than a month old; I’m not getting them redone.
Yes now I can see why you say the two groups gave really different feedback. Quite strange really. Your peers within your work area sound very supportive. Dopers probably didn’t have that foremost in our minds
You are quite brave in any case putting out your pictures for a critique. I originally thought you were posting photographs of a sister or friend. ( and yes for a dating site) I should maybe do the same with mine ( although I normally post mine on the ref door to scare my friends kids away from the ice cream!)
Anyhoo. best of luck
I don’t see why people make comments like this whenever they see a reasonably slender woman. To me, she looks like she’s at an ideal weight or even slightly above ideal. Perhaps we see so many fat people in our day-to-day lives that fat begins to look normal.
Ponch8, you silly, silly, man. We’ve gone over this 100,000 times this week. We have to get you an SDMB-English dictionary.
English: Average, healthy weight
SDMB: Malnourished, anemic, possibly dying of cancer
English: Chubby
SDMB: Thin
English: Fat
SDMB: Average weight
English: Quite starkly obese
SDMB: Slightly fleshy