Always Carry a Business Card: Portraits of a Stranger With a Great Beard

As a portrait photographer I'm constantly studying people's faces, styles, personalities and expressions. The human face tells you so much before a single word comes out of it, and sometimes you just see a look you would love to photograph. I see them all the time, and until recently I would just say to myself, "Man, that would be a cool portrait with this lighting or that background."

Then I saw an interview with Tim Tadder where he said he carries a stack of business cards for exactly that occasion. It made so much sense that I had to start doing it myself. Why wouldn't somebody want an awesome portrait of themselves? It builds your portfolio with some really different looks, it's a kindness to extend to somebody, and if they say no, you'll most likely never see them again.

With that in mind, I was at a local bar with Sam and saw a guy with a really awesome beard and a generally cool look, and I had to offer. I waited for him to walk to our end of the bar and had a card in hand. I explained that I was a photographer, that I thought he had a great look, and that I'd love to shoot his portrait sometime if he was interested. I'm sure there was a moment of confusion (and maybe a little creepiness), but he rolled with it, and a few months later we set up a shoot.

I hope that gives a few of you an idea of how to approach somebody and expand your portfolio. It's good practice for cold-calling in business too, because that's essentially what you're doing: putting yourself out there and hoping for the best.

The plan

Maybe it was because I'd met him as a bartender, but I loved the idea of shooting Matt with a glass of amber whiskey on a rough wooden table, with my simple Oliphant backdrop behind him. That was a setting I could build at our house pretty easily, so all I had left to work out was the lighting and the clothing. I wanted something rugged, and a lighting setup that said the same thing.

Setup one: light from above

I've been studying and playing with overhead light a lot lately, so I immediately put the smaller Elinchrom Rotalux octa above his head for a soft, well-diffused top light. It threw some light onto the backdrop and worked as both separation and a hair light, which was a nice start. From there I went to my go-to main light, a white Profoto beauty dish. Keeping everything high put the contrast I wanted onto Matt's beard and face and created great depth through the whole image.

First setup: done.

Setup two: breaking the eye-line rule

The second setup came from an image I saw on Platon's Instagram feed. I've been a fan of his work for a long time, and he had a portrait of Daniel Craig shot from below the eye line, looking up at the actor. I was immediately pulled in by how he broke the rules and how unexpected the camera position was. I thought it would be perfect for Matt's face structure and beard, so I built a very simple setup to make it happen.

I used the large Elinchrom octabox as the backdrop, blowing out the light behind him to create a soft, white, wrapping background that added something to the face. The main light was again the white Profoto beauty dish. My friend Eric, an excellent photographer, was assisting for the evening, and he held a black reflector as close to Matt's face as he could to flag light off one side of it.

We were shooting tethered into the computer all night with a black-and-white conversion already applied in Capture One, so we could all see the result immediately, and we were pumped. It was a great way to end the evening, and it gave me a strong contrast to the first image, which was exactly what I wanted.

Second setup: epic.

The moral of the story

Always carry a business card, be ready to put yourself out there, and enjoy making pictures of people who interest you. Make connections, have some fun, and maybe even enjoy a glass of whiskey or two.

The behind-the-scenes video is below.

The film

Watch the behind-the-scenes film

Originally published on the Ruddock Visuals blog, July 2016. Lightly edited in 2026.