In April, actor Emely Cuestas hired me and makeup artist Jacque Bischoff for a headshot and portrait session. We all had an absolute blast together and made pictures that made us happy. This is the story of that session.
It all started, as many things seem to have begun, with Idle Muse Theatre Company’s phenomenal production of The Tempest in fall 2024 in which Emely was cast as one of the six actors playing the part of Ariel, along with Distant Era frequent fliers Gary Henderson and Jacque Bischoff, as well as Connar Brown, Mara Kovacevic, and Emily Pfriem. I photographed The Tempest and made new friends, which led to portrait sessions with Gary and Jacque and company manager Kati Lechner, and now Emely Cuestas.
The Consultation
Prior to the session, Emely and I did a consultation where we discussed the kinds of roles she tended to play, as well as the kind she wants to be considered for. Emely described her look as soft, warm, and inviting, but with a dark side she wanted to tap into, mentioning that she would love to play a scream queen in horror movies.
Emely said her tagline is:
A warm, unique psychic who is the essence of Audrey Hepburn and Jenna Ortega.
In the following weeks, Emely put together a Pinterest board featuring colors, poses, and looks that spoke to her.
The Session
For Emely’s session, I drew directly from our consultation and the colors and looks she was most drawn to. Based on Emely’s choices, I bought a new coral/carnation-colored background from the good folks at ProGear Rental in Chicago. I can’t promise I’ll go out and buy a new background for every client, but if you played Ariel in Idle Muse’s production of The Tempest, you have a good chance of me buying a new background for your session. The results have worked out.
We started our session on white, my traditional starting choice. A white background headshot is very versatile and can be used for commercial and corporate work; it makes a good LinkedIn profile; it works equally well as an actor headshot. I find the white background often helps start the session off in a high energy direction as well, and Emely made great use of it in her shots, changing hairstyles and rotating from a brown top to a blue one to a leopard print top.
All of these different styles made for some versatile portraits. Conventional wisdom in headshot photography is to avoid patterns, especially busy ones, but I had a strong feeling about Emely’s leopard print top, and even before the session started, I knew I wanted to see the way it looked on white and on red. We were thrilled with the way it looked in both. On white, I especially loved the way it went with Emely’s leather jacket in a way that screamed scream queen to me.
Makeup
Jacque Biscoff did Emely’s makeup for the session, as she has for several previous Distant Era sessions, including Natania and Nick, Gary Henderson, Drew Beyer, and Jacque’s own session.
Her work speaks for itself. Here are a couple closeup shots and three-quarter shots from the white background portion of our session that show off Jacque’s makeup.
Adding Color
We switched to the background I think of as “vampire red” for those scream queen looks Emely had been looking for. Later, we switched to a dark top. We focused the light, added the leather jacket back in, plus plenty of shadow, and the look changed completely.
From there, we moved on to the carnation background I bought for the session, and we discovered whole new looks that became iconic for the session.
She Contains Multitudes
It was amazing to see the way Emely transformed as we went back through the pictures, changing from person to person. Where she’d gone from young ingenue to professional actor to warm healer to cool mom on the white background, she became a kickass, badass tough on the red background with her leopard print top. When we changed over to the carnation color, switching between a white top and a teal one, hair up and hair down, Emely became completely different people, and the contrasting colors and her incandescent smile popped her right out of every portrait.
Here’s a small gallery showing the breadth of feeling and character Emely brought to her session. There are hundreds more! It was astounding to go back through the session to see the crazy amount of versatility Emely effortlessly conveyed.
My goal with this portrait session (and every actor portrait session) is to show range and to give an actor plenty of options to visually demonstrate their range. That’s what we were working for.
BTS
Emely’s session was one of the most fun sessions ever. We were all having such a great time, we didn’t want it to end.
During the day, Jacque captured some of me in my element, endlessly metering and adjusting lights. Here’s what that looked like.
And here are a couple of my own behind-the-scenes shots. We all laughed a lot and told stories, and we shared a meal together before moving on to the next thing.
The Next Thing
That wasn’t quite the end of the session. We did one more look that day, reopening the Golden Age of the Silver Screen series for a future update! I’ve always tried to offer something extra in a full portraiture session for clients who are my friends, and this was an opportunity to share the love with Emely. Here are a couple behind-the-scenes teasers for an upcoming post!
A million thanks to Emely Cuestas, as well as to Jacque Bischoff, for making this one of the most fun and fulfilling sessions ever.
