We love to celebrate and we love to highlight excellent portraits. So while we are not so timely on the Pride Month theme, we feel there is always a reason to celebrate Pride! We will launch July with our celebration of some wonderful headshots and business portraits highlighting this community.

For us, inspiration for our corporate and business headshots comes from looking at all kinds of portrait photography. It is wonderful to be able to start with a research subject that might lead us to new headshot work, or to revisit old portraits that we have not come across in some time.

It would be easy to fill pages and pages of blog posts highlighting the LGBTQ community. There are the LGBTQ portrait photographers in our industry who have contributed their creativity and unique perspective. And, of course there are the subjects that our photographers cover and by taking their true, beautiful, fun and fantastic portraits, share their significance with the world.

In this post, we decided to focus on excellent headshots and portraits of the smart, driven, heros and icons that have led change for the LGBTQ community.

Starting way back in the 1960's we can look to Marsha P Johnson. She was a trans woman who identified as gay and emerged as a leader following the Stonewall uprising. Uniquely and 100% her own woman, Marsha led with personality, style and spirit. Together with another LGBTQ rights trailblazer, Sylvia Rivera, she founded STAR, or the Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.

Unsurprisingly, as a contemporary of Andy Warhol, Ms. Johnson sat for many portraits with him. While our corporate headshot subjects rarely come to us with her wild creative style, we see similarities in how he approached the portrait. As his goal was to create a true portrait of who this person was, our goal is to create a corporate headshot that feels both honest, beautiful and flattering.

When considering our next subject, Harvey Milk was an obvious choice. For those who don't know, he was an outspoken politic figure in San Francisco, who rallied the gay community to identify issues and speak up for their rights. It took him many campaigns to be elected to public office, but eventually he won. As an active official on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, he moved definitively on legislation that would fight against discrimination. He was one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States, earning the local title of the Mayor of Castro, a street and neighborhood in San Francisco.

Here is a business portrait of Harvey Milk from the Bettman Archive. It is office photography of a sort - a wonderful look at him in his habitat, district map in the background with stacks of paper, business cards and photographs strewn about. This documentary style business portrait gives us a window into his professional life like only the best environmental portraits can do.

Edith Windsor might not be an household name, but she brought a case all the way to the Supreme Court that was instrumental to future progress. Her case laid the groundwork for one of the biggest human rights gains in the LGBTQ community: Same Sex Marriage.

In 1996, Windsor inherited the estate of her female partner of 40 years. They were married in Canada as same sex marriage was not yet legal in the US, but lived in NY. Because they were not recognized as legally married in New York, Windsor was subject to over $350,000 in taxes. Had their marriage been recognized the taxes would have been 0.

In 2010 Windsor filed a suit against the federal government, fighting this injustice. She argue that there was discrimination inherent in the Defense of Marriage Act that led to her unfair and exorbitant tax bill. She won this landmark decision, paving the way to the case for same sex marriage.

This professional portrait of Edith Windsor by Robert Maxwell is a heroic portrait of a powerful, self-assured woman who, with her fight against the Defense of Marriage act, paved the way to same sex marriage. While it is no corporate headshot, it is most certainly a professional portrait highlighting a hard working activist. She looks unstoppable.

Michael Sam was a formidable competitor in the NFL and man, was that guy brave?! In one of the most difficult communities where, at best, homosexuality was a fraught conversation, he announced what he was: a gay man.

This headshots by Richard Phibbs is, in many ways, no different than a typical sports headshot. Sam is shirtless. His physicality is impressive. He addresses the family unflinchingly. He is a fit and strong professional player. Of course, his recently announced his sexuality, that he was gay in a profession that has little precedent for identifying as gay, hangs between the viewer and the subject. It helps us understand two things about him at one time. It is a complex headshot photography, a dramatic business portrait of sorts.

These portrait photographers have beautifully highlighted important figures in the LGBTQ community. We gain inspiration from both the imagery and what they represent for continued progress.