If you’ve been following me on social media, you may have noticed that since the beginning of the year, I’ve been working on a long-term personal project in collaboration with the École Nationale de l’Humour (who happen to be my neighbours, literally). In a nutshell: I’ve been documenting the behind the scenes and the day-to-day of students at the school of humour. I’ll be sharing those photos shortly as soon as I’m done wrapping up the project. But for this post, I wanted to share something else. As my relationship with the school and the students grew, I became a familiar face, a fly on the wall. Eventually, the school hired me to photograph the students’ graduation headshots.
And so I brought my headshot studio kit ALL THE WAY to the school (30 seconds away). For these photos, they had the honour of wearing the same old unwashed cap and gown that 20 years of alumni had worn before. And of course, because this is the École Nationale de l'Humour, there weren't really any rules for the graduation headshot, so props and weird faces were allowed and welcome.
And as a gift to honour their release into the wilderness of Montreal’s comedy scene, the school and I gave them slightly more serious casting headshots. The only differences with my typical headshots is that 1) we added a kick light in the back to match the production value that these performers are used to having when they're on stage with fancy lighting, and 2) I was smiling and laughing a lot more than usual behind the camera, given my subjects. Here are some of the results for the casting headshots!
