The stage actor's face, and what a camera asks of it
There is a particular ease to photographing an actor who has spent real time on a stage. The instrument is already tuned. Francis Price came to the Main Street studio with exactly that — a classically trained presence that knows how to hold stillness without going dead behind the eyes, which is the whole quiet art of a good headshot.
A New Jersey native, Francis trained at the CalArts Theater School, where he took his MFA in Acting, having read Theater and English at Middlebury College before it. The grounding shows. He is a member of Actors' Equity, and has performed Off-Broadway on several occasions with the Potomac Theater Project and the Dogteam Theater Project at the Atlantic Theater in Chelsea — the sort of rooms that teach an actor to carry a character to the back row without ever pushing. Alongside the stage work he has built a body of film, professional and student-directed alike, and a short of his was nominated for Best Student Short at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival.
The work in the studio was to translate that stage instrument into something a casting director reads in a quarter of a second. The theatre actor gives you presence across a room; the camera wants it concentrated — pulled into the eyes and the set of the mouth, where the whole of a man's intention can sit. So we worked close and quiet, a single key shaping the face out of a low ground in the manner I keep returning to, light doing its oldest job: deciding what we look at first. Francis is an easy collaborator in that respect — precise when precision is wanted, loose enough to let something unplanned arrive, which is exactly the spontaneity he carries onto a set. The best frames came in the spaces between direction, when the actor stops performing the brief and simply is.
A headshot is not a flattering picture. It is a piece of casting evidence — the argument, made in one frame, for the roles a man can credibly inhabit. With an actor of Francis's training the argument writes itself; my part is only to light it honestly and stay out of its way.
Each session here is actor-first and guided throughout. You needn't know how to pose or perform for the lens. My work is to direct you — calmly, precisely — toward images that look like you on your strongest day.
Who these headshots are for
Trained stage and screen actors who want their presence read in a single frame
Performers submitting to LA agents, managers and casting directors
Anyone needing images that carry across breakdowns, self-tapes, IMDb and press
Sitters who want clear direction and an honest likeness, not stiff posing