One of the great things about being a headshot photographer here in Brooklyn is that you have no idea who or when you are going to be shooting from week to week. Unlike other genres of photography like weddings that are booked well in advance, often times clients will call looking to schedule a headshot session in the next day or so.
Towards the end of the summer, I got a call from Deedee Derksen regarding setting up a headshot session. Whenever someone books a session, the first thing I do is "google" them. I think it is a disservice to your clients to not have any knowledge about them ahead of time and it gives me something to talk about during the shoot. When I googled Deedee, results came up for a Dutch war reporter who had written a book called "Tea with the Taliban." So I started thinking to myself, this ought to be an interesting session, although I'm not sure all my usual dumb jokes and random things I say during headshot sessions would be appropriate for someone that was a writer of such serious topics.
But as it turns out, she was a delightful person that appreciated all the ridiculous things I say during a headshot session in the pursuit of eradicating blank expression photography. And it was also interesting to get someone else's take on a country, Afghanistan, that is so often portrayed in one way by our media here in the US - she loved being in Afghanistan - not something I ever imagined hearing from someone.
