Celebrity Portrait Photographer Miami Kate Benson | New York Mets’ Jacob deGrom

Last week I had a photo shoot with Jacob deGrom, the New York Mets pitcher who was the National League’s Rookie of The Year in 2014. We drove up to Tradition Field in Port St. Lucie where the Mets have their spring training to meet with Jacob. The photos were to be used for the New York Observer and they wanted two different looks: one in his Mets uniform, and one in his regular street clothes. We had access to the field, the stands and the locker room, so we had to decide where we could best capture Jacob’s personality.
We arrived at the site about two hours before Jacob was to arrive because we wanted to check out the location and lighting options. It is difficult to plan for outdoor lighting at 9 in the morning when you will be shooting at 11 because the angle of the sun changes drastically, but we did the best we could. We only had 20 minutes to shoot Jacob, so we didn’t want to waste any time at all configuring lighting or finding perfect angles while he was on set. Instead, I used my assistant as the stand-in and spent about two hours testing everything so we would be one-hundred percent ready to go the minute Jacob arrived for the shoot.

Jacob walked out on the field at 11:00 on the dot. All 6’4″ of him. First off, let me say that he was incredibly nice and personable. None of his recent accolades have gone to his head. He chatted amicably, and even shared some of his hog-hunting stories with us.

We got down to business and ended up with some great shots.

Follow this link for more work by Miami Portrait Photographer Kate Benson.

Follow this link to read the article in the New York Observer about Jacob deGrom.

Miami Portrait Photographer | Musical Artist Thiago de Melo

On January 20, I had the opportunity to shoot Brazilian singer/songwriter Thiago de Melo while he was in town from New York. He was looking for some natural photos that would convey his fun, relaxed personality and also needed short video clips of him discussing his new album (in both English and Brazilian). Both the photos and the video were to be used on his new website. It was a lot of fun to work with Thiago, as his individualism and charisma came out easily while in front of the camera. Being both silly and serious for the shoot was no problem at all for him, as you can see in the following photos:

 

Thiago’s music is a wonderful mix of soothing and vibrant tones, combined with his gentle yet spirited voice. If you follow him on Twitter or “like” him Facebook, you can download a copy of his latest album, “Home, Family & Roots” for free.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThiagoDeMeloMusic

Twitter: https://twitter.com/thiagomusic

Thiago’s website: http://thiagodemelo.bandcamp.com/releases

Miami Portrait Photographer | Optimize your headshot!

Many of you already know me on a personal basis, but for those who don’t, my husband Sam is an internet guru. I really don’t know how else to describe him. He works in hospitality helping hotels make the most of their online presence. This week he will be speaking at a conference in Tennessee and so he came to me because he needed a new headshot. Okay, so why is this interesting? Photographer takes picture of her husband… big deal. Actually it was what he taught me that was so cool I wanted to share it with everyone. On one of the blogs he follows Cyrus Shepard created a post called “How Optimizing My Ugly Google+ Pic Increased Free Traffic”. To sum it up, by placing a color behind the subject people were statistically more likely to click on that person or their link/article. Google likes to put our bio pictures all over everything it can now, and the internet has become overrun with black and white head shots, or head shots against a black, white, or grey background. So when I photographed him we did it against, you guessed it, grey (and I included a black and white of the shot for him too, aren’t I nice!?). He shared the article with me after our photo shoot.

 

He took it upon himself to add orange to the background (this is what we would call an artists rendering of what he did, I can’t find the actual file anywhere now)…

Orange. Bright orange. Now, no offense to my beloved or anything here, but after some convincing he let me have a go at changing the grey background to a color for him. I went with a techie blue (he also has blue eyes so that was inspiring me).

When I saw his new headshot with this color pop up in my text messages I the post hit home. My eyes immediately rush to his shot over all the other photos next to text messages in my phone (everyone has a little photo next to their message on my phone). The effectiveness of this in a larger setting (aka, the web) was not lost on me.

Since then, I’ve shot two more portraits one for a writer, one for a jewelry designer, both asked for blue as the color behind them.

At this point, I’m feeling rather out dated with my black background behind me in my bio pictures. Guess it’s time to update myself! What do you think??? Out with the old….

In with the Warhol?

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