A few years ago I started shooting headshots at conferences. If you've never done it: it's chaos. A line out the door, everyone in a hurry, and the same question every single time — “when do I get my photo?”
The honest answer used to be “in a week or two, check your email.” Which is a terrible thing to say to someone standing in front of you in their best blazer, excited, right now.
So I built something. A little system that let me shoot, cull, and drop a finished headshot into someone's inbox before they'd even left the building. No business cards, no “we'll be in touch.” Just — here's your photo, it's already yours.
It started as a hack to make my own event days less insane. Then it grew. It survived real conferences, real lines, real “the wifi just died” moments. It got a payment flow, a retouch queue, a client portal. Somewhere along the way it stopped being a hack and became the actual thing I was selling — the delivery was the pitch.
And then other photographers started asking how I did it.
For a while my answer was “it's just my thing.” But the more I got asked, the more it felt selfish to keep it locked up. So this week I opened it up. Headshot Station is now something any photographer can run at their own events — the same tool I've leaned on for years, minus the part where you have to build it yourself.
It's a strange feeling, handing over the thing that used to be your edge. But I've never believed in hoarding tools. I'd rather more people got to give that answer — here's your photo, it's already yours — and skip the two years of duct tape it took me to get there.
If you shoot events, it's yours now too.