Earlier this week, my friend Sarah mentioned needing new headshots. “Let me know if you know anyone in Lansing…” she said. Normally I’d be her go-to. But I’m a Colorado-based photographer and she’s in Michigan.

But, I have an idea. Our friend Emily, who lives twenty minutes from Sarah, has a decent camera and I could walk them through it from afar—with me on speaker.

A day or two later Sarah tells me that Emily is in. They’ll head to a local nature center at 2 p.m. their time, noon my time in Colorado. I know the nature center well, having run through it and around it and in it many times over the last fifteen years, so I’ll have an understanding of the lighting and scenery.

They’ll call me when they get there, I’ll walk them through what I can and then Emily will send me the RAW files after.

Referencing a PDF of her camera’s user guide, I walk Emily through getting her Nikon off an automatic setting and into manual mode. This way I can have a better understanding of what the camera is doing when I can’t see it and be more informed about which tweaks to tell her to make to get the lighting right.

They do a few test shots with an iPhone and text them to me so I can see the background. From those photos I suggest a few tweaks—stand further away from the tree and get closer with the camera; try standing in the middle of the trail instead—and they send a few more iPhone test shots.

After a few attempts, we collectively agree we’re onto something.

Then they move to Emily’s camera and more deliberate poses where Sarah actually keeps her eyes open. They take a few more iPhone photos, this time of the camera’s LCD screen and text them to me. I tell Emily to bring the shutter speed down or something else. And, we repeat this process a few more times until our excitement collectively elevates about what the camera’s showing us.

Then they go into full photoshoot—with available light—mode. I’m trying to make out what they’re saying on speakerphone. I struggle to tell if they are talking to me or talking to each other, because the phone is obviously on the ground and halfway forgotten about in headshot excitement.

I can hear Emily counting down, from five, to each singular shot and we all laugh as I tell her again to, “Stop counting down and just take a bunch of pictures as fast as your camera will let you, damn it!”.

Emily gets excited about the lighting. Sarah decides her best look is a hand-on-hip situation because, “I don’t know what to do with my arms.”

After an hour of camera adjustment, test shots and texts, location changes and wardrobe changes, I have to let them go and leave them to it.

Over an hour later Sarah calls me back to say that’s a wrap.

Later that evening I receive a WeTransfer link from Emily and began editing.

It was a funny and fun process. Here are some of our final images.

Photo by Emily Langenberg; photo edit by Nicole Bush

The Nicole Bush Media Blog

Photography: A remote headshots collaboration