Cinematic Headshots for Actors, CEOs, Executives & Corporate Professionals in New York
Cinematic Headshots for Actors, CEOs, Executives & Corporate Professionals in New York
British Photographer Roryβs actor headshots, corporate portraits, and creative imagery are defined by cinematic lighting, emotional depth, and timeless composition.
Rory Lewis brings a signature European cinematic style to the high-stakes heart of New York City. Operating from his Midtown Manhattan studio, Rory merges the classical precision of a British portraitist with the bold, fast-paced energy of New Yorkβs corporate and creative elite. We donβt just capture your face; we capture your authority, your versatility, and your unmistakable presence.
Step 1: Email the Studio
Email Alexandra at AL@RORYLEWIS.STUDIO or fill in form below and share a little about yourself, your headshot goals, and whether youβd like to shoot in LA or NYC or London.
Step 2: Get Session Details
Rory will carefully review your inquiry and send you full session experiences, pricing, and current availability, so you can move forward with clarity.
Rory Lewis Captures Sir Patrick Stewart (Rory Lewis Photographer)
The New York Eye. A Museum-Grade Legacy.
With over twenty years behind the lens, Rory Lewis is an award-winning British Portraitist whose work is held in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery (London). Having captured defining images of royalty and Hollywood icons like Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen, Rory brings that same master-level precision to every Manhattan session.
Influenced by the dramatic lighting techniques of the Old Masters, Rory specializes in a cinematic aesthetic that strips away artifice to reveal the true character of New Yorkβs top talent. Each session is a tailored masterclass in direction, ensuring that whether you are a Broadway lead, a C-suite executive, or a digital influencer, your portrait carries the prestigious visual edge required for the world's most competitive markets.
π The Cinematic Edge: Actor Headshots for High-Stakes Casting
In a sea of flat-lit LA headshots, we specialize in depth, shadow, and intention. We don't "take" photosβwe direct character. By identifying your "type" and applying cinematic lighting, we create the images that stop a Casting Director's scroll
πΌ Corporate & Editorial Headshots
For professionals, entrepreneurs, and executives, your headshot is your brandβs handshake.
Roryβs editorial-style portraits balance confidence and approachability, ideal for LinkedIn, company websites, and press profiles. Sessions can take place in-studio or on-location across Manhattan and the greater New York City area.
Trusted by the worldβs most influential organizations, Rory Lewis architects the visual identity of global industry leaders and C-Suite executives. Simultaneously, his cinematic portraiture serves as a catalyst for talent, with Roryβs subjects consistently securing leading roles in major studio features and Emmy-award-winning productions.
Step 1: Email the Studio
Email Alexandra at AL@RORYLEWIS.STUDIO or fill in form below and share a little about yourself, your headshot goals, and whether youβd like to shoot in LA or NYC or London.
Step 2: Get Session Details
Rory will carefully review your inquiry and send you full session experiences, pricing, and current availability, so you can move forward with clarity.
π§ Studio Location
π Midtown Manhattan Studio 580 8th Ave 20th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
The Manhattan Experience
Premier Midtown Location: Sessions are held in a professional creative hub at 580 8th Avenue, easily accessible for professionals across all sectors.
Signature Cinematic Lighting: Expertise in Chiaroscuro and Tenebrism creates portraits with depth and drama that stand out to casting directors and industry leaders alike.
High-Stakes Direction: Roryβs process focuses on "continuous movement and direction," capturing the spontaneity and truth needed for modern branding.
Industry Approval: Recommended by major industry platforms like Spotlight and Backstage Casting, Rory provides the visual shorthand for professional excellence.
From Monday 16 to Thursday 26 November Iβll be back at the Farringdon studio. London visits have a way of filling quickly, so I wanted to set out plainly what the diary has room for this time: headshots and portraits for individuals, executive and C-suite sittings, military portraiture, formal and royal commissions, and a small number of one-to-one tuition sessions for photographers who want to learn how this kind of light is made.
Some faces arrive at the studio already halfway to a painting. Devin McElvogue walked into the Downtown Los Angeles studio with a head of tight copper curls, a red beard, and a pair of hazel eyes that, under the right light, turn almost amber. A gift for a portrait photographer, but also a responsibility: when a sitterβs colouring is this distinctive, the headshot has to render it truthfully. Casting directors are not booking an idea of a redhead. They are booking Devin.
Travis Quentin Young brought the full weight of his Louisiana upbringing and Los Angeles-honed versatility into the Downtown Los Angeles studio. Born in Lake Charles and already performing on national television by the age of ten, Young carries a quiet authority that belies his years on screen.
Billy Hirsch arrived at the Downtown Los Angeles studio with the same unfiltered energy that defines his work. Brooklyn-born and now a Southern California transplant, he carries that unmistakable East Coast edge softened by West Coast ease β a combination that makes him instantly compelling on camera.
One day of thirty-minute update headshots in Midtown Manhattan β two looks, one image fully retouched, and the only date I am offering them in New York this year.
People sometimes ask me why an actor should sit for a headshot with a portrait photographer rather than a headshot photographer. It is a fair question, and the honest answer is that the distinction shouldn't exist. A headshot is a portrait β it is simply a portrait with a job to do. It has to walk into a casting director's inbox at nine in the morning, sit alongside three hundred others, and make somebody stop scrolling. That is not achieved with a white seamless and a ring light. It is achieved by looking properly at a face, understanding what it does, and lighting it the way the old masters lit theirs: with intent.
Last week Clancy Brown came to the Downtown Los Angeles studio, and I finally had the chance to build a picture I have been carrying around in my head for some time: a man at a table, with bread and wine and fruit in front of him, lit the way the Old Masters lit their suppers.
Some weeks stay with you. This one, at the United Nations in New York, is among them.
During this year's General Assembly I had the privilege of photographing two leaders I have had the honour of sitting before my camera in the past: His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan, and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Andy Burnham.
Private, intensive photography tuition led by Rory Lewis β an award-winning portraitist recognised by the National Portrait Gallery, Portrait of Britain, and Hasselblad Masters.
A dedicated space for my workshop and tuition clients to continue their journey with ongoing support, resources, and direct access.
After years of running headshot workshops and one-on-one tuition sessions in New York, London and Los Angeles, Iβve created a private Telegram group exclusively for my tuition clients.
This is not a general photography community β it is a focused, members-only space where you will find:
I'm delighted to be back at my Midtown Manhattan studio from Thursday 5 to Saturday 7 November, with a limited number of sessions available across three days.
I am very grateful to All About Photo, and to its founder and director Sandrine Hermand-Grisel, for featuring my work in an interview published this month.
Two days of sittings in Midtown on 17 and 18 September, at Young Studio on 8th Avenue, followed by the New York masterclass on the Saturday. Actors, executives and commissioned portraits β one light, dark ground, as always.
On Friday 11 September 2026 I am opening the Downtown Los Angeles studio for a single day of thirty-minute headshot update sessions. Each one gives you two looks and one retouched image, and it is the only date this year I will offer them.
Last week The Wall Street Journal published Marc Myers' House Call interview with Jared Harris, and the portrait that opens the piece is one of mine.
The sitting took place at my London studio. Harris was filming at the time, and he set the production aside for a day so that he could sit. That is not a small thing. A filming day is an expensive, jealously guarded commodity, and an actor who gives one up for a portrait is telling you something about the seriousness with which he regards the record of his own face.
My portraits are held in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, and in the Royal Collection. I have photographed Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Patrick Stewart and Dame Judi Dench, along with five British Prime Ministers, Tony Blair and Theresa May among them, and I am a four-time winner of Portrait of Britain. What I teach at Samy's is exactly what I practise in those sittings. Nothing is simplified and nothing is held back.
Last October β a full year before the book would reach the shelves β he came to my Farringdon studio to sit for the cover of Things I Took from the Dark: The Museum of Me, his illustrated memoir, published by Quercus on 8 October. For thirty years β from The League of Gentlemen through Psychoville to Inside No. 9, which brought him and Steve Pemberton a BAFTA for its final series β Shearsmith has been British television's most reliable custodian of the uncanny. The book explains why.
There is a particular pleasure in photographing an actor who has spent time in the eighteenth century. Tom Connolly leads the feature film Love, Courage and the Battle of Bushy Run as Colonel Henry Bouquet, the Swiss-born British Army officer whose victory at Bushy Run opened the road to the relief of Fort Pitt. The battle was fought, as it happens, in the first week of August, two hundred and sixty-three years ago this month.
On Saturday 19 September I am teaching a one-day portrait masterclass in New York, at Young Studio on 8th Avenue. It runs from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon, models and lighting are provided, and you need bring nothing but a camera and a short lens.
14 August β 17 September 2026 Β· 411 S Main Street, Unit 222, Downtown Los Angeles
My Los Angeles diary is open from 14 August to 17 September, and I am now taking bookings for headshot sessions, commissioned portrait sittings, and private tuition. After 17 September I return to London and New York, and these are the last extended Los Angeles dates before the autumn.
There is a particular kind of face the camera waits for. Not the arranged one, not the face that performs readiness the moment a lens appears, but the one that carries a thought behind the eyes and lets you watch it move. Michael DelaFlor brought exactly that into my New York studio, and it made the work a pleasure.
I return to New York this August. From Saturday 9 to Wednesday 13 August, my studio at 580 8th Avenue β twenty floors above the Garment District, a few minutes' walk from Times Square and the theatre houses β will be open for actor headshots, portrait sittings, and corporate headshots.
There are faces the camera simply agrees with, and Fedly Daniel has one of them. He came to my Midtown Manhattan studio (580 8th Avenue, 20th Floor) for a new set of actor headshots, and from the first frame the session had that quality I'm always chasing β stillness with something moving underneath.
Yesterday, Andy Burnham accepted the invitation of King Charles III to form a government, and became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Speaking outside Number 10 β no lectern, standing freely in the street in that unmistakably direct Northern manner β he promised a "circuit breaker for Britain." My warmest congratulations to him. It is a remarkable moment for the country, and, I confess, a quietly extraordinary one for me.
Join award-winning photographer Rory Lewis for an immersive photography workshop on lighting and direction techniques.
What you'll learn:
Lighting techniques for headshots and portraiture
How to direct your subjects for natural, compelling shots
Tips to enhance your photography portfolio
This workshop is perfect for photographers of all levels, from beginners to seasoned professionals. Rory's engaging teaching style ensures you'll gain practical skills and knowledge that will elevate your portrait photography to the next level.
There's a particular pleasure in a sitter you clock the moment they come through the door, and Alex Wyndham was one of them β Maecenas himself, Octavian's silken fixer from the second season of Rome, standing in my Downtown LA studio some seventeen years on and none the worse for it. I confess I said as much straight away, which is not always the done thing with actors, but there it was. One doesn't forget a face that spent a whole season murmuring political poison into a young Caesar's ear.
Rory Lewis Photographer here, with some splendid news from the casting desks of Hollywood. My warmest congratulations to the wonderful Rosanny Zayas, who has officially joined the recurring cast of HBO Max's acclaimed medical drama The Pitt for its third season. Rosanny will play Physician Assistant Vera Delgado, scrubbing in alongside Noah Wyle and company at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center when the new season arrives in January 2027.
I am back in London for one week this July, the 21st through the 27th, and the studio at Bleeding Heart Yard will be open for the duration.
There is a particular pleasure in photographing in London that I never quite shake. The light here behaves differently β softer, more conspiratorial, forever threatening rain. It suits the way I work. I have spent the better part of my career chasing the kind of light the Old Masters understood instinctively: a single source, a deep and forgiving shadow, a face emerging from near-darkness as though it had decided, of its own accord, to be seen. Caravaggio knew the trick of it. So did Rembrandt. The shadow is not the absence of the subject; it is the thing that gives the subject weight.
π οΈ The Process
Consultation β define goals, type, and usage.
Wardrobe Guidance β plan tones & styles that flatter on camera.
Guided Session β expressive coaching to capture your range.
Proof Gallery β review & select favorites.
Professional Retouching β subtle polish, natural finish.
Delivery β ready-to-use files for Spotlight, Backstage, IMDb, and LinkedIn.
β Why Choose Rory Lewis in New York
International Reputation: portraits exhibited by the National Portrait Gallery (London).
Cinematic Lighting Mastery: inspired by Caravaggio and modern film stills.
Personalized Direction: relaxed sessions that build confidence and authenticity.
Industry Recognition: recommended by Spotlight & Backstage Casting.
Trusted by Leaders & Artists: from Hollywood to Wall Street.
π§Ύ FAQ
Do you photograph beginners?
Absolutely β Rory works with both seasoned performers and those new to professional photography.
Natural light or studio light?
Both β sessions often blend cinematic strobe with natural window light for depth and dimension.
What should I wear?
Bring solid colors, minimal patterns, and necklines that frame your face. Weβll refine the selection on set.
How long before I get my photos?
Final retouched images are delivered within 5 business days of selection.
π Book Your New York Headshot Session
To schedule or request rates, please include your desired dates and whether you need makeup services or corporate branding shots.
Email: AL@RORYLEWIS.STUDIO
Timeless headshots that open doors β crafted with cinematic precision in the heart of Manhattan.
Christian Bell stepped into the Downtown Los Angeles studio carrying a look that immediately commands attention. The striking two-tone afro β rich dark curls giving way to a crown of silver-white β became the defining feature of the session, but it was the face beneath it that made the images sing.