Rachel Lance // Author Headshots in Durham, NC

I am always SO EXCITED to do author headshots because it’s quite an honor to take the photo of someone’s mug that will be appear attached with one of their biggest life achievements and it makes me happy. Also I like seeing my work in a book because I like books. I particularly like nonfiction books about horrible disasters, which is why it’s SO WONDERFUL that Rachel found me. Rachel is being published by Penguin Random House (!) and her book is called In The Waves. Without going into spoilers (buy her book!), she essentially went on a mission to figure out why The Hunley, a Civil War-era submarine, mysteriously sank back in the day and killed everyone on board. Here’s an article The Smithsonian did on Rachel and her research (complete with video of Rachel’s CSS Tiny replica). Rachel also loves nonfiction disasters, and she’s the first and only person to have ever gifted me a book on cholera. I think we were meant to meet. I will update this page upon Rachel’s book release to give a link to how you can buy and read it!

Promo: Author Brenda Rufener

This was so exciting, you guys! Brenda Rufener is a young adult author who is having her novel Where I Live published by HarperCollins in 2018. We were kindly asked by her to photograph her book jacket headshot and we said YES because BOOKS. So Brenda’s smiling face will greet you from a Barnes & Noble next year and my name will be next to said smiling face in some otherworldly, Twilight Zone twist of fate. Very exciting. We spent the afternoon making her look very **AUTHOR**. Book jacket headshots are very, very tight headshots for some reason. The industry standard being from the shoulders and above or waist and above (although we did some wider ones for her promo materials as well). So we ran around and zoomed in SUPER CLOSE on Brenda and talked about books and about how REM is one of the best bands of all time. She gets to go on a book tour and have her books in libraries and all sorts of really cool book stuff. We’re so happy to have done these headshots for such an amazing woman, and to have a wonderful author amongst us in Durham! Check out Brenda’s website for more information! http://www.brendarufener.com/

Christena Cleveland // Promos.

We started doing a lot of promo sessions last year and we absolutely love them! They’re a great chance to try some new things and change up the pace a little bit. It’s also fun to meet new people with interesting careers that need photography for promotion or branding of their business. This week it was an honor to photograph our very first author! Christena Cleveland is the author of Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart. Her degree is in social psychology and she specializes in issues of reconciliation and how it relates to the Christian church. She contacted us to do some more casual headshots and promo photos for her speaking engagements and website, and we were happy to oblige. Christena is professional, intelligent, and great to work with – not to mention beautiful and possessing a really great taste in furniture. :) Check out her book on Amazon, her website here, and her promo photos below!