About the founder
Twenty years behind a lens. One photographer who couldn't unsee what AI was getting wrong.
I'm Joshua Albanese, founder of Aurawave AI and a working headshot photographer for nearly two decades. Behind me sit 15,000 studio sessions, three million frames, and a top-10 US headshot studio in Chicago. I built Aurawave because the AI headshot category was getting one thing wrong I couldn't unsee.
Founder & photographer
Joshua Albanese
Why I built Aurawave
The competitors were built by AI researchers. I am not one.
I'm a portrait photographer who watched the first wave of AI headshots ship through 2023 and 2024. I kept seeing the same defect an art director flags in a studio reject pile. The lighting was generic. Wrong catchlight, wrong fill ratio, skin smoothed past the point where the person was still the person.
The diligence question my customers ask is sharp. Will recruiters spot it and think I'm being fake? That fear is right to have. I built Aurawave so the answer is no.
The frame I keep in my head is from a casting director I worked with years ago: if someone met you at 8 a.m. on a bad-hair-day morning, they should still recognize you instantly. Same hair. Same jaw. Same age. Better lit.
A 2018 dateline behind every frame the engine grades
The numbers behind Joshua's eye
-
18+
Years specializing in headshots
-
15K+
Individual studio sessions
-
3M+
Images captured
-
Top-10
US headshot studio, Chicago, 2007–2024
From Fulton Market to Fort Myers
The studio, the bridge, and the AI
I opened my Chicago headshot studio in Fulton Market in 2007 and ran it for seventeen years. Voyage Chicago profiled the studio in 2018, before AI headshots were a category. That dateline matters. The photographer's eye I'm encoding into Aurawave was already a decade old before this category existed.
In 2024 I closed the Chicago space and opened a new portrait studio in Fort Myers. JA Headshots is my traditional photography practice, and I still book live sessions there every week. The studio is at 1325 Canterbury Dr., and the price list is real, $500 a session and $150 an image.
Aurawave launched in May 2025. The bridge from one practice to the other is simple. The AI is the camera. I am still the photographer.
The four checks
What working photographers do that AI usually doesn't
A real photographer doesn't hand the client a memory card of 800 frames. The client sees the keepers. Aurawave's engine works the same way I do at the cull, on four checks no AI-research-led tool runs in this order.
-
1
Read the catchlight
A headshot without a catchlight in the eye reads as flat and slightly dead. The engine grades for catchlight position before anything else. So do I, on every studio frame.
-
2
Check the fill ratio
The shadow side of the face has to fall off in a specific range. Too much fall-off and the face looks harsh. Too little and the face looks pasted on.
-
3
Hold the ear-line and the jaw separation
Posing is geometry. The ear-line should not stack on the shoulder, and the jaw should separate cleanly from the neck.
-
4
Kill the failures and regenerate
When a frame fails any check, the engine deletes it and renders a replacement until the set is clean. The client gets the keepers, not the rejects.
The studio Joshua still runs
Same photographer, two products
JA Headshots is my traditional photography practice in Fort Myers, Florida. The studio is at 1325 Canterbury Dr., the price list is $500 a session and $150 an image, and the calendar still books live sessions every week.
The traditional studio is where the eye that grades Aurawave's frames came from. The fact that I still book traditional sessions every week is the proof. You can see my portrait studio at jaheadshots.com and verify the work yourself.
In the press
The 2018 timestamp predates the category
Voyage Chicago, 2018
Founder profile of JA Headshots in Fulton Market. The interview ran before AI headshots were a category, and the studio was already eleven years in.
Read it
GlobeNewswire, May 2025
Aurawave's launch announcement on the record. Joshua quoted on the trust gap in professional headshots.
Read it
JA Headshots
The Fort Myers portrait studio Joshua still operates as a working photographer. Live booking calendar, real address, real price list.
Read it
Diligence questions
Questions readers ask before they buy
The five questions that show up most in journalist, partner, and decision-stage diligence.
Who actually built Aurawave?
What is Joshua's photography background?
Is Aurawave the same company as JA Headshots?
Why does it matter that a photographer built this instead of an AI engineer?
Can I see Joshua's portrait studio portfolio?
See the work
Headshots that look like you, lit the way a working photographer would light you
Delivered in under 90 minutes. Every photo graded.