What Makes A Great Headshot?

A veteran of film and television, Ming Lo has appeared in numerous Hollywood films including Pursuit of Happyness, Jarhead, Million Dollar Baby, Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, Lost Souls, and Red Corner. On television, you might have seen him on The West Wing, Boston Legal, Scrubs, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Navy NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigations Service), Red Skies, Thieves, The Parkers and The X-Files. You might even have heard his voice in The Matrix: Path of Neo video game. In addition to the multitude of small roles he’s played in Hollywood over the years, Ming Lo has also become an accomplished filmmaker and photographer, specializing in headshots and ZED cards (also known as comp cards, used for marketing by actors and especially models). He recently took timeout to speak with Asiance about his career in Hollywood, his photography work and what makes a great Headshot?

ASIANCE: Tell us about your photography work.

Ming Lo: I used to shoot in high school, but I picked it up again a few years back. I’ve always liked to look at things visually. My father passed away a few years ago, and I realized I didn’t have many pictures because I had stopped taking pictures, so I sort of got back into it and decided I wanted to take more pictures and have more memories of my life.

ASIANCE:Was that something you thought of as a profession growing up?

Ming Lo: It was just fun. Also, I was just getting into filmmaking a few years back, and in filmmaking it’s good to understand things visually, so you know photography and filmmaking are actually very interrelated. So from the artistic to the technical it all overlaps quite a bit. Taking some more
photography made me a better filmmaker; being a better filmmaker made me a better photographer, and back and forth. Being an actor made me better at both. So it’s fun because they all kind of overlap and it’s like cross training. Basically, they all kind of help each other out.

ASIANCE: How did it lead to you taking headshots?

Ming Lo: As a photographer, I like moments. I guess this comes from my bias being an actor. Some photographers are more technically oriented; they’re more about composition and light, and these kinds of things; and what makes a technically good picture; and I’m very much about capturing moments in a person’s life. And that’s what I’ve always done. I mean even when I was a kid shooting and when I was in High School or traveling I always wanted to capture a moment or capture a scene or capture how something felt. So I’ve always liked that and one thing about headshots is that headshots are very much about trying to capture somebody’s personality, and it’s also about trying to capture an expression in the eyes or how someone is feeling in a certain moment, so it can be very difficult because you have to do a lot of things in one picture. You have to be technically good. You have to have good lighting, you have to have good composition, you have to have [a] setting, [and a] good background all at the same time. You have to try to really capture the personality of the person and what that person can express.

ASIANCE: Do you ever feel you have to bring out that person you’re shooting? Or do they kind of naturally ease into after a while and get comfortable?

Ming Lo: It’s actually very, very hard for most people. Even for established actors. The fairly established actors are pretty good at it because they’re in front of a camera all the time so it’s very much like being in front of a film camera but I find that if you’re a complete novice, it’s good to have a photographer that can bring it out. And even if you have some experience, or you’re somewhat experienced as an actor, a good photographer can help you bring out the range of possibilities. It’s like playing a piano, we only play one or two octaves most of the time, whereas the full range is I think eight octaves or something like that. So if a photographer can help you bring out some more [delete “than”, replace with “, then”] that’s really important. Most of us, in our everyday lives, we’re sort of limited in what we express.

ASIANCE: Do you feel like your photography is able to touch on the emotional aspects of a person’s personality to bring out those little details about them. Is that what goes into a good headshot?

Ming Lo: I think that’s actually the most important part. I mean the headshot is simplified so much that you only focus on the person and their eyes. Headshots are often chest and above, leaving just the person’s head. You simplify the background so that your eyes are drawn to the face. So a lot of that is bringing out [someone’s personality]. It’s very hard to stare at the camera and it’s very unnatural. Unless you have experience doing it and you have an idea of what to do it’s just a very strange experience. What you do in everyday life isn’t necessarily what looks good in front of a camera. So sometimes you have to adjust what you do, and often, in front of the camera, you have to repeat it, and you have to do it several times. So finding that is hard. I think because I’m an actor and director, I can help people with that because it takes a little bit of knowing. It usually takes me a little bit of time to get a sense of the person, to figure out what the person is like. Every person’s unique so in the first 15 to 20 minutes you just take a bunch of pictures just to get a sense of what the person looks like on camera, what their range of expressions are, what they tend to express, and once I get to know them a bit, I can pull more things out of the shoot.

Ming Lo

ASIANCE: Do you use digital or film? What format are you shooting?

Ming Lo: I love film, but digital is the medium of preference these days. Digital is easier because you can shoot a lot and you can erase pictures so you don’t have to worry about wasting a shot. You can just put it on a disc and give it to someone and they can walk away with it. The color and all these things are all very good. If you’re a good photographer and you know how to set that up then you’re fine. The drawbacks of digital are that usually it captures a lot more detail than film. Film kind of interprets and softens things a little bit, whereas, digital tends to be very detailed. So you have to know how to work with that as a photographer, generally you capture a lot of detail on the face which might require some work in Photoshop later on. The other advantage of digital is speed. In film you take shots and you have to worry about how many shots you take, you have to send it to a lab, so there’s a turn around time, and then it comes back, and you have to go through them again, and you have to get prints to look at them in a larger size in order to be able to choose the one that you like…. it’s just a time consuming process.

ASIANCE: Is it any easier for you to work with actors as opposed to average person?

Ming Lo: There’s no real difference. But with very experienced actors it’s very easy because they’re used to knowing what their face looks like and what expressions or what an expression or look or feeling looks like on camera. With newer actors it’s about the same. The hardest part about taking a headshot is that the moment that its ideal to take a headshot is a split second.. So for example, whenever someone takes your picture you don’t know when you’re going to take the picture and they say smile it could be a half second, full second or two seconds later that they actually take the picture and in that two seconds you’re holding the smile… and after that first half-second [,] the honesty, the freshness of the smile is gone. So, we’ve all experienced that… and as a headshot photographer you need to know how to keep people natural, and keep it flowing, and know even when people are experiencing something, and what the right time is to take the photo. That’s often the hardest part.

ASIANCE: How did you go from photography work into acting?

Ming Lo: Actually, the acting happened first. I was in consulting and I went from consulting into acting. I was an actor for about six or seven years before I started picking up the photography again. I mean would shoot but not as a paid photographer. So after about six or seven years, I started shooting headshots and I just started small and did some friends and shot people and just did some test shots. People seemed to like it. Basically, I just do it by referral. People who meet me and see my stuff they’ll call.

ASIANCE: So how did you get started in Hollywood?

Ming Lo: I was at McKinsey and Company. I was a consultant. And I left. I went into acting. I got my headshots taken. I sort of ran around town and basically I pounded the pavement. I got an agent and all these things. I was lucky I had enough cash to last a year or year and a half. I was lucky I started making some money from acting in my second year and so I’ve been fortunate I haven’t had to really worry. My main living has come from acting since then.

ASIANCE: Can you tell us about your first major role as an actor?

Ming Lo: My first couple of roles were small. One was a soap, The Young and The Restless, and I remember that really well. It was great just because there was a lot of learning and they hired me maybe 10 or 12 times that summer. I did America’s Most Wanted, which was really fun. And then my first big role, I think was Red Corner with Richard Gere and Bai Ling. That was directed by John Avnet. I was fortunate to have a few days on that as a Medical Examiner.

ASIANCE: You’ve worked with Clint Eastwood in a scene from Million Dollar Baby. Tell us about that.

Ming Lo: Yeah… that was great. I’ve been very, very fortunate that I’ve worked with some great people. I only shot a couple of days on each of those, but it’s just getting exposure; get a chance to work with them; and see how they work, and see how they do their thing. Hillary Swank was great too. She’s really fabulous to work with. They’re all very nice, very easy,
very relaxed. And you know, it’s very much about the work, and making the film, making the story work.

ASIANCE: What was it like working with Eastwood as a director?

Ming Lo: I didn’t know it but I’d heard about it. He basically let’s you do your thing… He respects the actor a lot. Everything they say about him is true. He doesn’t call action. You take it on your own mark. So they’ll [roll] camera and as an actor you just choose when to start doing your thing. He only does a few takes and then he moves on. He respects you as an actor and expects you to deliver the performance and to really think about it and prepare. So he just basically let’s you go. It seems to work really well for him and that’s the way he was. He’s very low key and very easygoing. It was a small crew… much smaller than most of the sets I’ve been on… it was very relaxed… just set in a small room…. It was really a great
environment for the actor. Most people say film is a director’s medium because the director sort of controls everything that you see and they edit and so forth. But with Clint, he’s very much an actor’s director and he very much respects what the actor does.

ASIANCE: Tell me about your role in JarHead [screen credited as the Bored Gunny].

Ming Lo: It was actually really fun. I went in and I auditioned. It was pretty obvious, this character’s a bureaucrat. And I didn’t expect to get it. I think I’m the only Asian guy in the film. But you know, they called me and said you’re coming, so I showed up on the set. We were out on some set that looked like some military or ex-military camp in Palmdale. Literally,
there were hundreds of extras all getting their haircut. The lines that you see are actually [improvised] at the last-minute. I had a certain set of lines, so I did those and [Sam Mendes, the director] said you know why don’t you just say this. Mendes is also a great actors director. He comes from theater, so he really likes working with actors. And basically, there was one take where he sort of whispered in my ear and said go ahead and say this. He didn’t tell Jake [Gyllenhaal] and I said it. He just likes to see what happens and get it on film. And then he gave me a couple of variations. It wasn’t what was in the original script at all. What you see on screen is what we [improvised] on that day. But you know, he’s a great director. He’s very talented. Not only storytelling wise and visually, but working with actors.

And you can tell because you get on set and some directors like to work with you and some directors just sort of are more technically oriented and tend not to be as focused on the acting. Mendes was very hands-on. He was watching very carefully. He was very attentive and open to ideas and improv.

ASIANCE: Your roles in Million Dollar Baby and Jarhead weren’t specific to an Asian actor. They could have been played by anybody. But you do play a lot of doctors in the movies. How do you feel about that?

Ming Lo: I think my mom’s happy. [laughs] I think it’s just the way Hollywood sees us. Hollywood tends to see Asians certain ways and there are very typical roles played by Asians. I would say I play 60 to 70 percent doctors. What else do I play after that? I played monks, Korean Grocers, and you know… Asian bad guys. That’s probably 80-90 percent of what I play.

ASIANCE: Do you feel those stereotypes affect how people perceive you in real life?

Ming Lo: Yeah… certainly… to a certain extent… of course. Let’s put it this way, I’m sure it reinforces existing stereotypes. I remember once I was with a group of writers and this writer was writing about firemen and a friend of mine who was one of the writers, he’s the one who brought me into this table of writers and he said, “Oh, you should use Ming as one of the firemen.” And the writer hadn’t conceived [,] had not thought of having an Asian firefighter. So she was taken a bit off guard as well, and she even said, “Are there Asian firefighters?” Of course, there must be even if you haven’t met one personally. But she was like, “Huh?” So it’s kind of interesting to see that. You notice that even when you watch the news and the PR people who are talking about events are not Asian, except in medical fields. So when someone has a major operation and they come out and say, “Oh, how well is this person doing?” Sometimes that person will be Asian. One of the reasons there’s always Asian coroners and medical examiners is because there’s Henry Lee and there’s the [Asian] guy in L.A. [who] used to be a corner.

But the truth is when you see firefighters, the spokesperson is rarely Asian. So any sort of appearance reinforces or sets the direction of certain stereotypes.

ASIANCE: Do you feel like it has caused you to be typecast as doctors and medical examiners?

Ming Lo: Sure. Of course. Yeah.

ASIANCE: What do you think that does for your career? Does it keep you from expanding out? What is your feeling about it?

Ming Lo: It makes it harder. In [some ways] it’s got pluses and minuses. The plus is people look for you for certain types of roles. So for certain types of roles, you have a slight advantage. But it’s also limiting because one of the stereotypes is that Asians aren’t leaders. So Asian men have a hard time with lead roles, or leading roles, or roles with a lot of authority, you know, playing the antagonist. Unless you’re the mafia guy or mafioso of some kind, you rarely see an Asian guy as either the lead or antagonist. You don’t often see an Asian male as the protagonist or an antagonist. Usually, you see them as supporting characters.

ASIANCE: In an interview last summer, Justin Lin said he originally wanted to cast an Asian male to be the lead in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, but they couldn’t find a young lead Asian male that could carry the film, so they ended up casting a Caucasian actor [Lucas Black]. Do you feel like at some point that maybe there’s an Asian male lead that can carry a
Hollywood film?

Ming Lo: Yeah… it’s hard if we put the weight on the Asian guy carrying it. If you think about the process, a couple of things are involved. The writer has to come up with it. And where does the writer come up with it?

Well, he comes up with these ideas by looking at myths and stories. And he looks at the news. So those basically are your two sources of stories. It’s existing myths and the news. So that’s really all where it starts. It’s hard for an Asian guy to carry a story unless it’s specifically Asian because of these things. I mean what myths do you have? You have Bruce Lee. So you have the Asian male as warrior. Then you have the Asian male as wise monk, or teacher, or mentor, and you have Asian male as technocrat or bureaucrat, so people tend to write that way because that’s what’s embedded in people’s minds.

ASIANCE: Do you feel that if Asians want to have bigger roles in Hollywood they’ll have to start writing characters that are focused on Asian stories?

Ming Lo: There are a lot of actors but very few Asian executives, writers and directors. So when you look at the creative forces behind things, there are not many Asians in that area. The other thing is I think you need more Asians leading in everyday life. Writers tend to say, “There’s an example in real-life,” and they take that and put it into writing. So to change things, you need to change things on two fronts. One is you need more Asians in charge of the creative process. But actors are not in charge of the creative process at all. We tend to think of actors because actors are more visible, but long before you start casting someone has to write it, finance it, put it together, develop it, and put together a team that’s going to execute it. All these kinds of things. So that’s a huge factor in the process. And then in terms of everyday [life, the] more that Asians take a lead in everyday life, the more that they serve as examples for other people to look at.