Some sessions chase a single definitive frame. This one was built for range.
Michael Akinsulire is a London-born actor whose screen credits include the Star Wars series Andor, Killing Eve, the Tom Clancy adaptation Without Remorse, Disney's Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Project Hail Mary. A CV that moves between prestige television, franchise film and thriller needs headshots that can open more than one kind of door. So rather than hunting one hero shot, we set out to build three distinct registers in a single sitting — each aimed at a different casting brief.
The cinematic profile.
We began in shadow. Black corduroy shirt, a warm olive ground against a rust wall, and one directional light that Michael turned into rather than faced. The result reads like a film still — contained, watchful, the drama held in the jaw and the eye rather than performed for the lens. My first career was cinematography, nearly thirty years behind a camera and the last twenty photographing actors, and this is the register where that training earns its keep: light placed the way a cinematographer places it, not the way a passport booth does.
The direct frame.
Register two strips everything back. Deep red ground, plain black tee, and Michael straight down the lens with nothing softened. What makes the frame work is his stillness — a quality you notice within seconds of him sitting down, and one casting directors read instantly. This is the picture for the grounded, serious brief: authority without noise.
The warm one.
Then we let the air in. A soft cream ground, a blue knit, looser body language — and the smile arrived on its own, which is the only way a smile should ever arrive in a headshot. Same man, same afternoon, a completely different set of doors: the warmer, open briefs the first two frames deliberately refuse.
Why three registers.
Casting runs on briefs, and a single headshot can only answer one of them. The discipline is in making each frame genuinely distinct — wardrobe, ground and light all changed between setups, so no casting director ever has to squint and imagine. An editorial eye, with casting discipline: that is the whole method, and Michael Akinsulire, an actor with real range and the presence to hold each register honestly, is exactly the kind of performer it was built for.
For actors building a similar range of their own, this is what the Director's Session exists for.
Photographed at my studio in Seven Sisters, North London.