Aaron Marcus, an actor-model with 30 years and 1,200+ jobs, breaks down indoor versus outdoor headshots. Indoor gives you control over lighting and wind; outdoor feels warmer but needs careful attention to hair and distracting backgrounds. Either way, skip plain backdrops and blur heavily so your face stands out.
Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and welcome to my Acting and Modeling Quick Tip channel. Make sure that you subscribe and click the notification button so that way every time I upload a new video, you'll be sent a notice. So for this quick tip, question is, should you be shooting your headshot inside or outside? Look, I've been working as a full-time actor and a commercial model for over 30 years, booked over 1,200 jobs so far, and I've shot a lot of headshots. And there are pros and cons to shooting both indoors and outside. When you're shooting inside, you have complete control over your environment. Your eyes will not close a little bit because of the sun. They won't be squinting at all. You're not gonna have wind blowing your hair around. It's calmer, it's easier, and essentially, you've got more control. When you shoot outside and you're using natural light, It has a different kind of feel to it and you are subject to the environment and you do have to be careful of keeping your eyes open, of making sure your hair isn't moving around, there aren't other things distracting you. I can tell you— and look, things always change. Sometimes there are certain styles that happen in certain years and then they completely change. Personally, I like the idea of not just shooting a headshot in front of a white screen, green screen, blue screen, or a dark screen. It just doesn't have that interesting of a feel. I do find that if you are going to shoot inside, make sure that things are blurred so much in the background that you really pop out and it just doesn't look like an in-studio headshot. If you are gonna shoot outside, just make sure there are some preparations that you make, that things aren't so crazy in the environment. But also, you've gotta make sure that the background is unnoticeable so that you stand out as well. So it's really up to you to make the call. My suggestion though is just don't shoot it on a plain screen. It just doesn't— I don't think it looks all that interesting. It doesn't have that warm kind of feel to it. And you really want your personality to show through. And I think you can do that much better either outside or if you're shooting inside, don't have the screen, or at least one that's so noticeable. If you have any thoughts about what you do with your headshot, please share them here. And also, don't forget, if you're watching this on my YouTube channel, I greatly appreciate a donation. There's a link below that will take you straight to PayPal. As you can imagine, I spend a lot of time, money, having people help me maintain this free video site for you. So, you know, whether it's $20, $10, $5, $2, whatever it is, I greatly appreciate you making a donation and keeping this channel up and alive. Hey, I'm Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya.
