Vizual Assassin

Your Session

The Darwin Ward studio headshot sessions are shot in our Hawaii Kai Studio Located  at 1120 Kaumoku St Honolulu HI,96825 and last approximately an hour in length. We generally shoot a handful of different looks for our clients during the session. Shooting a range of looks over the course of the shoot allows you to mix it up and have multiple images available for whatever marketing purposes you choose.

Part of our process is to edit the session with you as you go. We will inspect each shot one by one with you to determine its potential use or not. By shooting and editing in this manner we can adjust the focus of the shots during the session to account for anything we feel we may have missed. You’ll know exactly what you will be working with when you walk out of the studio by having gone through the entire session and approving all images along the way.

The approved shots will be made available on your own link protected proofing Dropbox site. The images are usually posted before you leave the studio or shortly thereafter. You will be able to give the password to anyone who might help you choose the shots you decide to use. Once the session is over then it’s your responsibility to work with the images that we decided to keep. We charge a fee should you decide to return and shoot another look or two.

Retouching And Printing

Once you’ve chosen the shots you’d like to work with you can place an order for retouching with us. For quality control purposes we prefer to have all our work handled by our retouching team. We don’t release high resolution images directly to our clients unless you elect to purchase a full buyout of your entire session for $300. Should you choose this option, you would still be able to work with our retouching team if you like or are free to take the images to your lab of choice.

Clothing

Feel free to bring a range of different options for clothing. #1 rule for us is that you have to love it! If you don’t feel comfortable in it, you won’t shoot well while wearing it.

We suggest you bring a range of different colors and necklines. If you have any doubt about whether something will work or not just bring it along. Don’t be seasonal; everything from t-shirts, tank tops to sweaters and light jackets can work. We love textures and layers as well and try to keep it minimal on the jewelry. Studs or small earrings work and simple necklaces, anything hanging or chunky will usually draw too much attention in a headshot. Have some fun with this, if you feel your wardrobe is missing something then go shopping and we’ll keep the tags on it in case you’d like to return the items after the shoot. We have a steamer in the studio, so we’ll be able to easily sort out any wrinkling for you.

Hair and Makeup

Women’s makeup:

Makeup for the session is highly recommended for all women. The cost is $250 for makeup for the session and includes hair help.

The makeup is applied specifically for the lighting we use and we usually start very naturally to give you a very clean simple look. We do touch ups and will add subtle changes to the makeup as the shoot progresses. If you’d like to start off a little heavier on the makeup we are happy to do that as well, just let us know.

Women’s hair:

We ask that everyone come in with their hair ready the way you would like to present yourself.  We want your hair in your pictures to be as close as possible to the way you look on a fantastic hair day. Of course our makeup artist is there to make sure it’s shoot ready and we will discuss what you’d like to do with it and make a gameplan for the shoot.

If you need a major overhaul hair wise or you are naturally curly and want to go straight there may be an extra $50 charge for our makeup artist to blow it out for you. Make sure you discuss this with us prior to your session, so we are all on the same page.

Men:

We don’t recommend makeup on men, but our makeup artist can provide light grooming on the shoot for $200 if you like. All our work is retouched afterwards, so any blemishes will be taken care of during that process.

Facial Hair:

If you’d like to shoot with facial hair we’d be happy for you to come in with whatever level of growth you’d like and can shave or trim it down once we’ve gotten it covered. Bring whatever grooming products you’ll need with you to get it done.

Scheduling and Payments

We are available for shooting Monday through Friday and we usually begin the sessions around 10am. We do tweak the times depending upon the schedule each particular day, so we ask people to be a bit flexible. Be aware that the sessions overlap for women getting makeup. Women are in makeup for approximately an hour, so we are usually finishing off our first session while the makeup artist is preparing our next client to shoot. We ask that you don’t have anything else scheduled close to the end of your session in case we feel we need a little more time with you.

A non-refundable deposit of ½ the session fee is required to book a session. The fee is due at your convenience after you’ve chosen a shoot date and gotten it booked on our schedule.  However, if we have not received it at least one week prior to your scheduled session, the session will be granted to someone on our waiting list, so please get it to us as soon as you can.

We accept cash, checks, as well as Visa, Mastercard and American Express. The remaining balance plus any sales tax is due the day of the session.

We work with freelance makeup artists and you will be paying them directly, they require cash on the day of the shoot.

All deposit checks can be made payable to: Darwin Ward Photography and mailed to our Honolulu studio address: 1120 Kaumoku ST Honolulu HI,96825