Identifying your Stronger side
Today I’m going to quickly talk to you about identifying your strongest side. Now when I start talking about to people about their stronger side, often they will revert to “you know, that’s just for actors, you know actors, need to know their side They believe that it’s not really relevant for a business person. Well, I disagree. Obviously, these days, if you have a small business, you are doing social media, hopefully, if you’re not, you’d better have a look at that.
But if you’re watching this, you are probably aware that there is social media out there, if you have a small business you should be at least, looking at YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and potentially at the very least, you should have a headshot on your website, maybe on your business card or some people have headshots on the side of the cars. So to say that it’s only for actors, I think is not really thinking through the whole process.
So let’s identify peoples stronger the side ! So how do I do that really quickly ? The first thing I’ll do is identify somebodies hair part. Now, which side of their face do they have their hair parted on. Is that the right side or the left side, that that’s not something that I will often change for somebody because I think
they know their own face better than I do they will often say to me, my hair just goes that way, I will often say “that’s because you’ve been brushing it like that since you were three”
I hear people saying I don’t have any hair, or I have a middle part or I have a straight fringe. For those people I would often look at someone’s bigger eye. There’s 75% of people have one eye bigger than the other. So, I would quickly look for the hair part or I would go for the bigger eye.
If someone has no noticeable difference, that might very well indicate that their best side, their strongest side is straight ahead. So I might turn them so that they are front on to the camera. So, those types of little things can often help you identify your better side, particularly if your photographer doesn’t understand this stuff. It’s really, really important, I think, for me to be able to understand someone’s face and what we’re looking for and looking at when we’re looking to shoot someone’s head shot.
I shoot into a big screen, a big 34 inch screen in my studio. It’s a 90 minute session. So, we have plenty of time to identify your side to work on your best expression, but certainly identifying your strongest side is one of those first really really important things that I put a lot of value in.
Identifying your own side, for those moments when you go to an event, going to a networking event, you might go to a wedding, you might be simply doing a family portrait. You might be just out with the girls at lunch and wanting to do a selfie if you know your side, there’s a bigger chance, I feel that you’re going to get a stronger looking image. You are going to look more symmetrical, that’s really what we’re talking about, we’re talking about symmetry!