Recently I’ve been shooting a lot of headshots, and am finding myself really enjoying this type of photography. Perhaps it has to do with those windows to the soul — the eyes. Getting these tight headshots gives the person viewing the photograph an excellent view into those windows.

I had been using many off-camera strobes for lighting the previous headshots I’ve taken in the past, which generally means I must stop down my lens into the f/8-f/11 range and thus increasing my depth of field. Which is perfectly fine for a portrait or corporate headshot. With this photo session, I decided to try something different , using the giant softbox that Mother Nature provided — gray cloud-filled skies — and a white foamcore board just below the subject to fill in the shadows. This allowed me to use my 135mm lens at f/2, with a sliver of DOF, and really concentrate on getting the eyes tack sharp to draw the viewer immediately to the eyes.

I’m going to use this technique much more in the future.