War Story, Interview with David Vaughn

David Vaughn is a photographer who does headshots for actors and models.



Can you tell me a war story, or a story of when something went badly wrong, or seamed like it was going to fall apart, but then ended up working out or didn’t work out.


“I really haven’t had any thing horrible go wrong but there are always little things that go wrong all the time. Probably the worst thing that ever happened was when I was in New York shooting headshots for an actor. We went outside to a park and it started snowing and it was just terrible weather. He wanted the shots anyway so we were outdoors for about 2 hours, my fingers got so cold that I couldn’t release the shutter on the camera, my fingers weren’t even working … but he was so desperate to have these shots we went ahead and did it.”


Do you have any advice for a person starting out in a business like photography or advice for someone coming out of college?


“Actually I have two things; one would be word of mouth. You can advertise your business all you want but some of the best business is word of mouth. Usually an actor will come to me because they heard another actor recommend me. I think that stands true with any business in the arts. Your history with clients is always really important. All the time I hear clients say “I hear you do really good headshots” from this person and so forth… Only on two occasions have someone called me from an online ad.
My other thing is, especially working with actors and models, is to keep it as low pressure and as light as possible. They are so incredibly self conscious and nervous and you want to keep them as relaxed as possible, encourage them to goof off and be as casual as possible. The more relaxed they are the better product you get in the camera.”