Acting Portfolio Headshots in LA - Professional Acting Headshots

Fine-Art Portraiture

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DARKLY

1 Cor 13:12

Strong Body Language is key to an actor’s success in many different ways. In the audition room, a confident yet friendly body posture will ensure the casting directors in the room that this actor knows how to handle themselves. In improvisation classes, actors are taught to make strong choices in posture and body language when developing a character. This is a critical step that is so often forgotten about when taking acting portfolio headshots in LA. So here are the steps you can take to master posing and body language in your next professional acting headshot session.

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#1 Be in Your Head for Your Acting Headshots

I know it sounds crazy, but during your headshot session, you want to be in your head. It’s backward and counters everything we are taught as actors. We normally are told to stay present, engaged, and “in the moment” when we are performing a scene or onset. The worst thing you could do is to get caught up in your own thoughts and disconnect from the scene. But with acting headshots, it’s the exact opposite. Imagine headshots as a moment in time where we got a brief glimpse of a character and their emotions during the climax of their story. *Click* , that’s the headshot. That’s the moment we want to see behind the eyes. Whether the character in your head is a broken and depressed real-estate agent with bad posture, slouched shoulders, and a tired look, or a preppy arrogant college student with their chin held high, your body language choices for those characters is going to depend heavily on how deep you can entrench yourself into the mental state of that character’s life. These multitudes of character help to give life and depth to your skills, while simultaneously growing your acting portfolio headshots in LA.

Woman Posing For Acting Portfolio Headshots in LA

#2 Let Your Body Position Lead Your Facial Features For Your Acting Headshots

Many times during a headshot session your face will run out of things “to do”. It’s a mental wall that actor typically hit where they are at a loss of what to do next or how should I hold my body. Without the dialogue or action of script, it is very difficult to simply conjur up emotions or body language out of thin air: hence our first step, “being in your head.” Though the trick to having a near endless display of characters at your disposal is expanding your repertoire of body positions. Choosing strong body positions will instantly work at connecting your body language with your facial expressions. In Improv there’s an excessive that capitolizes on this truth. It’s called walking with purpose and works by having a host gather all the actors in a circle and make them walk. While walking the host will announce different physical attributes that you then must begin to perform as you walk. IE: your feet now weight 1,000lbs or Your fingertips are now on fire but you don’t want anyone to know. These small physical suggestions will instantly create characters in your mind and help you develop a backstory and mental state for your character – these character shopts working to grow your acting portfolio headshots in LA. You can easily use this same technique during headshot sessions to quickly create diverse characters by switching up your body position and posture and allowing your facial expressions to come alive as your brain begins to connect the two together. And with Glass Darkly, we will make these techniques come alive for professional acting headshots.

Man Posing For Professional Acting Headshots

#3 Sit, Stand, Lean

Working in tandem with different body positions, sitting, standing, and leaning shots will ultimately bring a ton of diversity to your headshots. Now you might not think sitting works well for headshots, but when composed correctly by the photographer you can achieve great strong body language that just cant be matched standing up. Having that flexibility during a session will truly allow your characters a wide range of spaces to explore. Leaning is a great way to display a relaxed posture. Many times it works great for commercial headshots.

# 4 Challange yourself For Your Professional Headshot Portfolio

Most importantly for your acting portfolio headshots in LA, you want to challenge yourself. You want to show off that range and diversity. You should be able to look at a college of all your headshots from the session and be blown away the they are all the same person. Now this doesn’t mean being overly “character” or “costumey” but it does mean showing a wide range of emotions and depth in your characters. Warm up your face before your session, think of the different zones and aspects of your face and body that can control expressions. Use your angles various axis of your body to show off what a slight change can bring to an image. It’s a subtle balance that, with the right professional photographer and professional acting headshots, you can explore and play with.