Business Portraits or Headshots

I have been running my photography business in Palo Alto and the San Francisco Bay Area since 1993.

Recently a headshot client came in, when I asked him how he heard about me, his answer was interesting. He told me, he searched online for business portraits and realized that term is no longer used. By comparison, the new term is Headshots. That is how he found me. Visit our Portfolio Page.

Headshots With Film Cameras

Some people may not even know that the term “business portraits” even existed.  Additionally, they may not know how business portraits were taken and used before digital photography and the internet. The first thing to remember that we used film. After a photoshoot, photographers had the film processed and ordered a set of proof photos. Then, in about a week, proofs were ready and the photographer would call the client for a choosing session. The negative of the chosen photo is then sent back to the lab with a request for negative/print retouching. Subsequently, the lab would probably take about a week to 10 days to send the finished photos to the photographer. In short, for the client to receive his or her business portraits would take about a month.

Businesses Build Websites

During the second half of the 1990s, businesses started to build websites. Consequently, we started to receive requests from companies for business portraits to be used on their websites. 

Because digital cameras were not widely used yet, we had to send our film to the lab for scanning. In addition, computers were very slow. As an example to open a 18 MB digital photo would take about 45 minutes.

Photo enhancing software was also limited. I started digital retouching in 1993 with version 2.5 of Photoshop.

Learn more About Hagop’s photography experience on our parent website.

Retouched Headshots Within An Hour

Because of the poor quality of the early digital cameras, I continued to use my Hasselblad for business portraits. Later, in the early 2000’s I started using a Canon D30 camera which made delivery of headshots faster. It was around 2003 when I first purchased my first digital camera, the Canon 60D. Since then I have upgraded to many different cameras. At this time, I am very pleased with my Canon Mark IV. Now I can deliver retouched headshots to my clients at the end of their session usually within an hour.

Read our blog Headshots Before The Internet.

Quality Headshots At A Reasonable Price