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Author: Iwona Krawczyk

  • A Pound Shop Torch as a Key Light

    I was halfway through a corporate headshot session in a basement studio when the main power tripped, plunging the room into a thick, suffocating darkness. My client, a man who had already spent twenty minutes asking what he should do with his hands, looked like he was about to have a panic attack. In that…

  • Stop Shooting the Moment It Errors

    I was halfway through setting up a single Profoto strobe for a corporate headshot—the kind where the client is already checking their watch every thirty seconds—when the payment notification on my phone went dead. It wasn’t a gear malfunction or a lighting issue; it was a declined transaction. Most “business gurus” will tell you that…

  • Buy Smaller Cards, Buy Good Ones

    I once spent forty minutes in a dim studio, trying to coax a CEO out of a defensive posture, only to have my heart drop into my stomach when my screen flashed a cryptic error message. It wasn’t the lighting, and it wasn’t the lens; it was a cheap, bottom-shelf SD card that decided it…

  • No, Not Even for the Portfolio

    I remember sitting on a milk crate in a drafty studio five years ago, staring at a “collaboration” request from a local brand that wanted a full lifestyle shoot in exchange for “exposure.” They didn’t want my eye or my lighting setup; they wanted a professional-grade production for the price of a tagged Instagram story.…

  • Heal, Do Not Smear

    I remember sitting in a dim studio three years ago, staring at a high-res portrait of a CEO who had spent the entire shoot insisting he looked “tired.” I spent forty minutes meticulously trying to figure out how to remove a blemish without a smudge, only to realize I was fighting the wrong battle. I…

  • Twelve Hours and Three Batteries

    I once spent three hours in a drafty studio in East London, trying to coax a decent headshot out of a CEO who was convinced he looked “too much like a thumb,” only to have my primary camera die right as the light finally hit the modifier perfectly. It wasn’t a technical failure of the…

  • Telling a Good Client the Price Went Up

    I remember sitting in a studio in East London, staring at a half-finished invoice for a corporate client I’d been shooting for three years, feeling that familiar, hollow knot in my stomach. I knew my costs had climbed—the rent was up, my gear was aging, and I was spending twice as much time on retouching…

  • Hard Light Has a Place

    I spent years watching studio assistants lug around massive, five-foot octaboxes like they were sacred relics, convinced that a softer light was the only way to save a portrait. But if you’ve ever been stuck in a cramped rental apartment with peeling wallpaper and a client who’s already running twenty minutes late, you know that…

  • Separating Texture From Tone

    I once spent three hours on a single author portrait, hunched over a monitor in a dark studio, trying to fix skin that looked like a topographical map of the Alps. I had followed every YouTube tutorial to the letter, but the result wasn’t “flawless”—it was uncanny. I had turned a living, breathing human being…

  • Wide Portraits Without Funhouse Faces

    I once spent forty minutes in a cramped, overheated studio in East London, trying to explain to a very expensive-looking author why his forehead looked like it was melting toward the camera. We were stuck with a 24mm because the client had insisted on “environmental context,” and suddenly, every time I tried to show his…