Hair Photography Tips To Bring Your Salon Walls To Life
You don’t have to wait until you are entering a hairdressing competition to reach for your camera and capture some scissor-work. Hairdressers are creative types, so why not extend your artistic abilities by photographing some of your best work to display on your salon walls?
Before you start snapping and start creating your own personalized canvas prints for your business, take heed of these tips for photographing heads of hair.
1) Find the USP
Whether you are showcasing your own handiwork or someone else’s, it’s important to understand what’s been done to the hair so that you highlight it in your photographs. You’ll want to make the hair the main focus, so if you’re not the stylist ask them to talk you through what they’ve done and what makes the style special.
2) Forget the expensive props
Ultimately you want the hair to do the talking, so while it would be nice to have great clothes on your models and a professional makeup artist on hand, you will be focusing on the hair anyway. With this in mind, be sure to pick not only the best styles to photograph but also the models with hair in the best possible condition – you don’t want split ends showing up in the stills.
3) Practice and play
Have a good idea of what you’re going to shoot and how before doing so. Do lots of shots of practice ‘dos’ before you move on to the real deal, this will help you understand how to photograph the hair and give you ideas for angles and lighting. This should also help with timing – if you plan to shoot several styles you’ll need more than one model and will need to stagger when they are ready.
4) Don’t just stick to head and shoulders
There’s a temptation when photographing hair models to automatically shoot straight at their face but that’s not going to show the cut or style in the best light. Don’t be afraid of ignoring the face completely in order to place emphasis on the hair and what makes it unique, from the front you’ll likely need the model to angle their face in order to do this. Next, shoot from each side, the back and above to capture different elements of the cut or style.
5) Avoid the flash
Flash can really blur details on hair shots, which isn’t ideal for showing up the nuances of individual styles, so avoid it if you can and make use of natural light. You might also use light reflectors, though it’s best to stick to white to capture the hair colour as the hairdresser intended.
6) Stay steady
To get the hair shots looking as sharp as possible you’ll need some steady shots, which means using a tripod and good manual focus. Instead of getting up close with a wide lens, shoot a little away with a medium telephoto lens, this should prevent distortion that can occur if you shoot too close.
Hopefully our hints will help you exhibit the work of the hairdresser - or yourself - effectively. Once you’ve selected your very best shots, don’t forget to transfer your images to canvas to create your own personalised prints for your salon walls. Why not tell the story of a style by displaying the preparation stages across several customised canvas prints or group together styles on a theme within a split canvas? Get started now with our canvas builder.