Kannarat Chiemchitvanicha has great makeup and a hair blowout for her headshot.
We think perfecting your hair for a headshot is key to success. So we sent our producer and co-owner of SRK Headshot Day, Patricia Kline out to do some field work. Here is her report:
We think having a makeup artist as part of our headshot and photography team is critical to making our clients look their best. We have even written a much-read blog post on why makeup is important for your headshot.
Having your hair the way you want it for your headshot is also important but a bit trickier for us to accomplish in the short amount of time we have with clients. We offer hair touch ups and smoothing and of course we eliminate any stray hairs when we edit your photo. But we have found the best way to have a good hair day for your headshot is to visit your local blow dry bar if you don’t have the time or talent for doing it yourself or don’t have time to visit your regular stylist. These blow dry bars seem to have popped up in many neighborhoods over the last year. In our confirmation to clients we recommend several popular ones in this area including Halo Blow Dry Bar, The DryBar and Bounce Blowdry Bar.
Robin Gillen came to her session with her stunning blonde hair ready to go.
I recently made the sacrifice to check out our local dry bar so that I could experience first-hand the blow dry experience and could ask for any tips to pass along to clients. Most of these salons use a variation on the slogan of — No Cuts, No Color, Just Blowouts. And while the concept is simple, the experience is anything but basic. I made an appointment at the SF location of The DryBar. Booking online was easy and the basic price of $45 includes a trip to the hair washbowl. You can add on extras such as special products or a scalp massage, if desired.
It’s especially nice that the salon opens at 7 am for those early morning headshot appointments. The appointments last about an hour.
The DryBar’s yellow-themed salon was bustling when I arrived for my appointment. I was greeted warmly by shop manager Allysa Wiesner and was led to my stylist’s chair within a few minutes of my appointment. The salon is set up as a bar (get it?) with a long counter set up behind a mirrored wall. The menu of services sounds like a delicious cocktail menu: the manhattan, the mai tai, the cosmo, and so on. I informed my stylist, Kaylee Haynes, that I had a headshot appointment coming up and asked her which style would last all day. She recommended the mai tai, which is a loose, beachy wave style. She said that it would relax nicely throughout the day and translate well on camera. She also recommended extra volume at the roots so that as the style relaxed, the top wouldn’t look too flat. If you prefer straight hair to wavy and select the “straight up” blowout, the extra volume is especially important. Kaylee recommended several products to help the blowout last — their own volumizing hair spray and flexible hold hair spray.
I was satisfied with my blowout and it lasted almost a full week with minimal touchups. The location of the salon, easy booking, reasonable price, convenient hours and the expertise of the stylists make trying a blow dry bar before your headshot session a no-brainer.
For more examples of our clients who had blowouts see our Pinterest page. Now that you know how to get that great looking blowout, book a headshot session on our website. Make sure you leave enough time before for your blowout.
Caroline Cabading has a blowout before her SRK Headshot Day session.
