Shooting headshots

I can still just remember my first headshot gig, taking staff portraits in a client’s London office. I went for an uncomplicated set up using one light and reflector, and a back drop in the company’s brand colour. I got the shots and the client was happy.

But fast forward more than a decade and my approach to shooting heads and shoulders looks a little bit different today.

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Stronger my Way - Staying healthy at Home

really enjoyed this healthcare campaign shoot, launched to give healthcare professionals the resources they need to encourage patients to exercise, rehabilitate and strengthen in their own home. It was great to come away with some really nice natural pictures, and capture that genuine father and son bond!

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Nathan ClarkeComment
Focusing on Biodiversity - A day out of the big Smoke

This was a great shoot and a real breath of fresh air this summer, when I was commisioned by GSK to document their Biodiversity Engagement day at their Stevenage R&D Centre in partnership with Kew Gardens. The pictures have been used to promote their current drive to increase biodiversity in the UK and across their sites worldwide.

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A final farewell to Queen Elizabeth II

As the day broke over Big Ben, queues of thousands of people, many who had been queuing over night, made their way to Westminster Hall to say a final farewell and pay their respects to Queen Elizabeth II. She was the countries longest reigning monarch and was seen by many as a rock of stability during a turbulent century of change, and to many others she was the nations most loved royal and a devoted mother and grandmother.

Queen Elizabeth II 21st April 1926 - 8th September 2022

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Nathan ClarkeComment
Suited and booted !

This was a great shoot and another nice client I’ve been fortunate to start working with this summer. It was a feature shoot for the IOIC magazine, photographing Joe Salmon, Associate Director of leading global communications company Hill+Knowlton Strategies. As soon as I saw Joe looking smart, sharp and professional with his warm and approachable personality, I knew it was going to be a great opportunity to get a nice set of portraits!

‘It was a pleasure to meet and photograph you Joe, and thanks for making it a little easier to get those portraits on the day!’

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Nathan ClarkeComment
Healthcare Uncovered

Shooting in hospitals, care homes and in the community for marketing and medical journals, was a big part of my healthcare client photography pre-2020. Then of course it all stopped, and one of my few memories of being allowed in a hospital with my camera over those two years, I was all wrapped up in hot, sweaty PPE, trying to shoot through….

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‘Blank Canvas’ - A fresh start and sharp threads

When I was commissioned to go into Linkedin’s London office to shoot headshot photography of a group of young people for a project they were involved in, I admit I didn’t know too much more about it, other than the brief for the portraits I needed to take. A few weeks later after spending a week shooting at the event and pop-up shop in Westfield(Stratford), that followed, I feel lucky to have been part of something pretty special! ‘Blank Canvas’ was created to……….

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Always by my side…….

One of my last big commissions of the year - this shoot for Guys & St Thomas’ Charity, is definitely one that stands out, and I will remember from 2021. In March 2020 Georgia contracted coronavirus and spent six weeks in intensive care and almost a month in a coma, during which time she was unable to see her family due to coronavirus visiting restrictions. She said she faced some of her darkest moments in that time, and the one thing that saved her, and got her through was………

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Nathan Clarke Comments
Back to School

With universities finally fully opening back up to to students last month, it was great to be back at Kings College University recently seeing and shooting headshots of familiar faces again! Being amongst the buzz of a busy university campus again and catching up with people I’d normally be seeing and working with all the time felt really good.

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Back shooting Healthcare again! - NHS Cancer Campaign Shoot

Photographing doctors, nurses and medical professionals normally makes up a big part of the CLIENT shoots that I do. So after a very long pause (while our NHS has been fully focused on with out doubt, the biggest medical challenge that we have faced (definitely in my lifetime!), it’s great to be able to be back out there shooting in hospitals again, and it was fantastic to be involved in shooting portraits for this big NHS cancer campaign !

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Nathan ClarkeComment
Sun and smiles in West London

Another outdoor London shoot and amazingly, yet again (after Greenwich Park), the unpredictable English Spring weather was on our side! This was a really great brand portrait shoot and one of those days when all the elements just come together.

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Nathan ClarkeComment
Morning Sun - Greenwich Park, London

It’s been a year of rediscovery and appreciation and I have definitely come to appreciate again, and shoot in, some of the great open spaces that London has to offer. Greenwich Park has to be one of my favourites, where I met this family for their family portrait shoot. Meeting and photographing more than one person at once almost felt like a novel experience again, and a real celebration in itself!

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Fist bumps and boardroom etiquette - Part 2

It was late morning on March 20th 2020, day 4 of the first national lockdown and I was writing the final few lines of my blog ‘Fist bumps and boardroom etiquette’. Even as I watched my diary of work evaporate, and looked out the window to the ghostly empty streets, and watched the national television broadcast of a stern-faced Boris Johnson telling us ‘lives will be lost, this is very serious and we should all stay at home’ ; for me like many people, this was my first personal experience of a global pandemic and I really had no idea of the true impact it would have, and how life as we know it would be turned on its head for the rest of 2020.

Nine months on and the last line of that blog feels more poignant than ever.

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Morning Stroll - Greenwich Park, London

It has been with out doubt an unprecedented year, and this will be a Christmas like no other, where the usual Christmas build up and the rush to beat the crowds to get your Christmas presents, is replaced by the rush to get the presents before moving to Tier 3! Where the plans for that big, once a year family social gathering are a little more complicated, working in the rules in place to protect our elderly loved ones and those at risk, and deciding which family members to delay seeing until Boxing Day. But I hope amongst it all you can find that little something that makes it special and makes it feel a little Christmassy for you with only ten days to go!

For me, going through my archive pictures, I found this shot, that always gives me that ‘cosy, wrapped up in hat and scarf’ Christmas feel. The day I shot this I’d actually headed out to capture a wintery landscape shot of the park full of children playing in the first snow fall of the year, but then he caught my eye, with his beret and little brown bag, and that line of trees. I quickly (and nimbly as i could with cold and numb fingers from the cold) switched the wide angle for the long lens, and snapped this frame before he disappeared into the white mist!………..

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Nathan ClarkeComment
London Rebooted Project - Portraits of London

It was a Monday morning in mid-March. I’d just finished editing the previous days’ headshots and I was checking my diary of shoots for the month, when the emails started coming in………A few days later my busy diary was empty, and on the same Friday I became a stay at home dad to our three-year-old daughter. The following week the lockdown started.

My initial feelings were confusion trying to process what was happening, then frustration, not being able to be out there documenting it. Then, when I began to accept the impact of these events that I couldn’t control, I was able to appreciate the incredible moments I was able to share with my daughter, that in normal everyday life I never would have had.

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Fist bumps and boardroom etiquette

The first time I witnessed the ‘elbow tap’ on a shoot, was between two attendees at a political event I was covering just over one week ago. At the time, there were a few people talking about ‘the virus’, even a mention of pox parties, as well as the odd bottle of sanitizer in view, but for most part it appeared like any other event, with handshakes and ‘business as usual’.

What a difference a week makes.

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