Life & Work with Geoffrey Donne

Today we’d like to introduce you to Geoffrey Donne.

Hi Geoffrey, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
A professional actor’s headshot has about 5 seconds to grab a Casting Director’s attention. Likewise, a professional’s profile on the web, LinkedIn, or social media. Similarly, portraits on a dating site. Seconds, and if the shot doesn’t grab the viewer, people simply aren’t willing to spend more time, and if you fail to stop their scrolling, your opportunity, job, audition, or future partner, vaporizes just as quickly. Fairly high-stakes stuff. There are hundreds of thousands of folks with cameras these days, eager to take your hard-earned money in exchange for their services. But just like anyone can buy a computer and start typing words, only a very few manage to make their livelihoods with either tool. It’s never the machine, but always the person operating it, and when it comes to creating effective professional portraits, exceeding at the art, the business and the craft is exacting and profoundly challenging. It’s taken me nearly 30 years of experience to get where I am today. Who am I, and why should you care? Well, here’s a big part of the “why.” I have, without a doubt, one of the most fulfilling jobs in the world… to help people make their most essential, most vivid, perhaps most deeply personal dreams into manifest reality by creating uniquely powerful and effective images that propel their carriers or lives. My journey to this penultimate job has certainly been a winding, challenging, sometimes perilous one. The central tenant of my life experience however, has essentially remained the same, my mission; to move other human beings emotionally, to open hearts, minds and imaginations to the nearly limitless possibilities of storytelling. I’ve never met someone who didn’t love a great tale, well told.

On stage, on screen, on either side of a camera lens, from my earliest childhood, I was captivated by the impact of stories, novels, plays, still images and movies. My parents were well-read, educated folks who made theatre, reading, playing pretend all staples of my childhood. The specific medium was secondary to the sheer power of making others laugh, weep, think and feel. The first time I held a room full of strangers captive with a performance I gave on stage, I was irrevocably hooked. I think it was The Three Musketeers, the old 1970’s movie version with Michael York as the swashbuckling young D’Artagnan, that first captivated my imagination. From the age of 7 or so, I was at heart, a child actor, then an amateur puppeteer, eventually a working professional actor on stage and in film and television, then stunt performer, cinematographer, writer, director, award-winning filmmaker, and today, a career consultant to other performers and myriad professionals hoping to capture their essence and empower their journeys with effective, impactful and memorable still photography images. I had no “in” into the entertainment industry. I didn’t come from money, lofty power or potent influence. After my parents divorced in 1977, my mother took me to see the classic American musical “Oklahoma” at Beverly Hills High School. Future feature film Director John Turtletaub played Curly, and some kid named Nicholas Coppola (later Cage) played the villainous Jud. I sat in the huge red velvet-seated theatre and at intermission, turned to my mom and said “I’ve got to come to school here.

Someday, I’m gonna be on that stage, I’m gonna launch my career from those boards.” Somehow, she managed to move us, my younger brother Roland (today, a top Hollywood animal trainer for film and television at his company, Talented Animals) just across the city line into an apartment in Beverly Hills, which was the qualifying requirement to attend Beverly High. Two years later, in 1983, my Senior year, I was indeed cast as the elderly Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. It being Beverly High, the sets were from a Broadway production, the Choreographer formerly Jerome Robbins Assistant. Other cast members included David Schwimmer (who later became a star on a little television show called “Friends) and Ryan Cassidy, son of America’s ultimate mom, Shirley Jones, star of the Partridge Family series. Needless to say, it was not your average high school theatre experience. In most High School musicals, your audience is friends and family and classmates. Here, it was the elite of Hollywood. A week after we finished our run, I was invited to a meeting by the President of the legendary William Morris Agency and was signed as an actor within a few days. Heady stuff for an 18-year-old with dreams of making good in Tinseltown. After some brushes with stardom, Equity debuts at the prestigious South Coast Reparatory Theatre, playing Macbeth at the Globe Playhouse, and months working on the sets of feature films like Steven Spielberg’s “Hook,” and Sam Raimi’s “Army of Darkness,” the tangible reality of actually making a consistent living as an actor began to fade into the proverbial rear-view.

As a result, I looked towards becoming a working cameraman and Director of Photography. That career kept me busy for a decade, as I accumulated numerous credits on network and cable series, including an Emmy Award for Season 5 of the hit reality series “The Amazing Race.” But at day’s end, it was exhausting, stressful, and ultimately, unfulfilling. After that, six years of corporate work as the right hand to the CEO and President of a major media intelligence company serving all the major and minor Hollywood studios, I decided suits and a fluorescent lit office weren’t for me. Seeking independence and to actually be of service to others, I returned to a childhood love of still photography, previously no more than a hobby. I quickly found numerous actor friends who needed headshots for agents and casting directors and thought if I could merge my knowledge of the crafts of acting, casting, production, cinematography and the discipline of the stage, I could offer something unique and empowering to my fellow artists. Happily, that turned out to be the case. While there are untold numbers of “headshot photographers” capable of lovely images and eager to take actor’s and other professional’s money, there are very few who are genuinely expert at helping clients define their brand, their casting, how to grab a viewer’s attention in seconds and hold it. Then… the image must make the viewer need to know more about the person. That urgency, that drive, leads to interviews, auditions, sales, dates, everything the client in the image desires. The how is a process. It starts with an in-person (socially distanced, masked, etc.) consultation.

If my client is an actor, we go through a multi-tiered process to lock down their casting, how others perceive them, what their core essence is, and how they are most likely to be hired. This includes an analysis of working actors who fall into the same ranges they do, the types of shows they are best suited to, and the Casting Directors and Producers running those shows. Utilizing the power of social media, my clients are taught how to develop relationships with these hard-to-reach folks, so when they DO get an opportunity to work with them, my client isn’t a total stranger. We then utilize all that insight to create still images that reflect those choices. Similar techniques are applied to lawyers, physicians, writers, musicians, potential dates. It’s all about creating authentic, empathetic images that resonate powerfully with a viewer. Pretty pictures are great for Mom and friends and Instagram. Effective professional tools demand a much higher bar. I’m thrilled to share that my process and the resulting images have had big impacts on many of my client’s journeys. The calls and e-mails and glowing reviews are all wonderfully satisfying. Yet nothing fulfills me more than an excited client calling me from on set, working, telling me that our efforts were a key reason they’re standing next to Denzel Washington, filming Macbeth. It may not be as glamours to be the unseen artist behind the lens, but I can’t imagine anything more rewarding or satisfying.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Any venture requires capital. Photography requires expensive tools. A successful photography business requires marketing resources. I had none of those. Website design and build, then SEO work to make sure anyone can actually find you. The challenge has always been getting “butts in seats,” as we say. The frightening reality is it takes time… in my case, about five years, to go from “hey, I can really do this, my work is superb!” to… “Okay, I can actually pay my bills.” I’m not about charging exorbitant prices, I’m about a sustainable, profitable venture that empowers others and makes me a decent living. “Under promise, over deliver” is easy to say but far more demanding to live by. But I do… it’s just part of my core DNA. Covid has presented unique and frightening challenges. My business was shuttered for nearly a year. Only now, with careful and strict Covid19 protocols, am I willing to invite paying clients into my studio, which thankfully, is in my home, so there’s far less overhead than if I was holding a brick and mortar lease. Even still, if I hadn’t managed to sock away some savings and negotiate forbearance on my mortgage, I’d have had to sell all my gear months ago. This job seems a fantastic dream to many, usually those who’ve never really committed to it. Punching a clock and simply “doing your job” is certainly easier. Like acting, “if you can do anything else and be satisfied with it, do it” holds particularly true in this, as with most of the creative arts.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
As a professional headshot photographer, but even more essentially as a career consultant, my work is about launching careers or helping to sustain and enhance them. My work begins with market analysis, branding consideration, casting identification and refinement, then using all that information to inform the creative process of designing and executing images that add rocket fuel to people’s careers or ambitions. That approach, combined with professional experience in myriad arenas; writing, directing, acting, producing, casting, cinematography, marketing and sales… all those years of in-depth professional experience contribute to every click of my camera’s shutter today. I am most proud of the fact that it WORKS. That my efforts and talents empower and enable others, and that the proof of that isn’t talk, it’s jobs, relationships, careers. I have a difficult time imagining something more rewarding.

Can you share something surprising about yourself?
There is a spiritual aspect to this work. There is some kind of magical alchemy involved. The Native American’s once believed a camera could capture your soul. I agree, metaphorically. I approach this work as an artist, a technician, but also as a listener, first and foremost. I meditate before every shoot. I often invite clients to join me before we work. Just 15 minutes of grounding, imagination work, breathing can totally transform a photoshoot. I often tell clients “What you think, what you feel, when I press the shutter, is what the viewer sees.” So that internal process of calming, grounding being willing and able to be seen, that is the “magic” at the core of this craft I believe. Sometimes the client has no idea what I’m really doing when I say “Imagine holding your child for the first time.” “Imagine sitting across the campfire from the love of your life, what does their laugh sound like? How do their eyes crinkle when they smile at you? Are you a good cop or a bad cop? Why? Are you on the take, simply because greed is good, or are you paying huge bills to take care of your special needs sister?” CLICK! I ask those questions, and others like them, rhetorically, as I shoot. The resulting images have a powerful effect. The client doesn’t really need to know how I get them there, simply that I do.

Pricing:

• Shoots start at $450.00 and include a complimentary initial consultation.

Contact Info:

• Email: geoffrey@geoffreydonnephotography.com
• Website: https://www.geoffreydonnephotography.com/
• Instagram: g_donne_photo_
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/geoffreydonnephotos