Hair

What a hair booking actually asks of a model

A colour service photographed properly runs six to eight hours, and most of it is not photography. It is sitting under a mirror while someone sections, sitting at a basin with the neck extended, sitting through development, sitting through a blow-out. The photographable moments are spread thinly across a long, physically awkward day.

The specific difficulty is that a hair model spends hours in positions chosen for the stylist's access rather than for comfort — head tipped back over a basin edge, chin down through a nape section, still through a razor cut. Being able to hold those without stiffening up, and then to come up and give a usable frame immediately, is the skill the booking is actually for.

What can and cannot be done to the hair

Anything that washes out is a standard booking — blow-outs, sets, heat styling, temporary colour, clip-in and tape extensions, wigs.

Cutting and permanent colour are available and are agreed separately, because they change what she can be booked for afterwards. A colour that has to grow out is not a day booking; it is a longer arrangement and it is treated as one. Raising it at enquiry rather than on the day avoids the conversation that otherwise happens with the client already gowned up.

Before-and-after, done credibly

The before frame is where most salon collections lose their audience. Shot with a flat expression and worse light so the after looks transformed, it is obvious to anyone scrolling, and it makes the after look retouched even when it is not.

Shot honestly — same face, same light, same energy, letting the hair carry the difference — it is far more persuasive, and it is the version she works towards. The transformation is the product; it does not need help.

Colour work and the camera

Colour is the hardest thing on a hair shoot to photograph truthfully. Balayage and dimensional work read as flat on camera unless the hair is moving or lit to separate the tones, and a model who knows which head positions open the sections and which collapse them is contributing directly to whether the work is visible in the final image.

Selected work

Full portfolio →