Tomorrow I’m getting new head shots and as a comedian, it kind of goes with the territory. Actually, with anything that involves you being in front of the public it’s required. There are bunch of people who have 9-to-5 jobs that get photos taken of themselves for publicity materials or investors or something.
The one thing I know about stand-up comedy headshots is that they are never a true indication of the comedian you are about to see. The average comedy headshot that is given to a club is about 8 years old. In fact the old headshot I’ve been using is going on 7 years. My old headshots were when I didn’t have as much of a double chin and my face was a little less fleshed out.
Now these aren’t complaints. I’ve grown up a lot and your body goes through changes. It’s not a big deal; I’m doing fine.
Getting in front of the camera for some reason is really easy for me. I’ve been able to do photo and video shoots in a relative short period of time. The video stuff seems a bit off because in general I am terrible at making eye contact with people. It’s been a problem I’ve had since I was a kid. Speaking in front of a class or just talking to someone in general I usually focus 40 feet behind the person and 40 feet above where they are.
But in the few cases where I’ve needed to “Speak to the Camera” this has been no problem. I focus right in on the lens and talk. I did a commercial shoot once where I just had to stand and deliver some lines. They told me that they wouldn’t have a teleprompter for me, but that didn’t faze me because I had the lines already memorized. Sure it’d be great to have a cheat sheet, but it wasn’t necessary. Also, I’ve never read from a teleprompter before. So that probably would have screwed me up even more.
But photos are really easy. Just stand there. Look at the camera and do something. I don’t see what’s so hard about it. Maybe in a second life I was a model.
So tomorrow I’m getting headshots, and because these are essentially just for stand-up comedy I’m kind of lost on what else my session should be used for. If these were acting headshots I’d probably dress up as something to show my range. But the only thing I can really think of for this is to wear a different color tie or do comedy finger guns.
But the idea is to have fun show and give a glimpse of mein a very specific and controlled moment. They are just photos, if I don’t like them then I just use the ones where I am considerably younger and lean in the face.