Joshua Michael Shelton

Joshua Michael Shelton is the editor and author of The LA Actor Guide. He is a Los Angeles photographer, filmmaker, and acting coach who has worked in the entertainment industry for approximately 20 years and has coached actor headshot clients for approximately 18 years. He owns and operates Headshots LA, a Los Angeles headshot studio, and that ownership is disclosed on every page of this site where it is relevant.

Experience

Joshua has spent roughly two decades in the Los Angeles entertainment industry as a photographer and filmmaker, and roughly 18 years working directly with actors on the materials their careers depend on. Coaching headshot clients means more than operating a camera: it means talking through how an actor is being cast, what a role type actually reads like on screen, which version of themselves a submission needs to show, and why the picture that flatters them is often not the picture that books them.

That work has put him in front of thousands of actors at every stage, from people who moved here last month to working series regulars updating their look. The through line of this site's advice comes from that vantage point: what actors are told, what actually happens, and the gap between the two.

He also runs LA Acting Schools, the sister directory that maintains verified profiles of Los Angeles acting schools, and publishes several other Los Angeles guides.

What he writes here

Joshua writes and edits every article on The LA Actor Guide. His direct expertise is strongest on:

• Actor headshots: what casting actually sees, commercial versus theatrical, retouching standards, session preparation, and how to evaluate any photographer
• Actor materials: how headshots, resumes, reels, and casting profiles work together as one submission
• The Los Angeles market: how the training, casting, and representation landscape actually operates here

On subjects outside his direct experience, such as union rules, state law, platform pricing, and market rents, he reports rather than opines: the facts are sourced to primary material and dated, per the site's editorial standards. Where an article carries his professional judgment, it appears as an attributed quotation so you can tell the difference between a fact and a view.

Disclosure

Joshua owns Headshots LA (headshotsla.com), a commercial headshot studio in Los Angeles. The LA Actor Guide's headshot articles mention it as his own studio, never as an independent recommendation, and always alongside independent photographers' published pricing. No other page on this site links to it. He takes no advertising, sponsorship, or affiliate revenue for this publication. See the advertising and sponsorship policy and the review and ranking methodology for how these conflicts are structured.

Contact

Corrections, questions, and resource suggestions reach him directly through the contact form. He reads every message. If something here is wrong, the corrections policy explains how it gets fixed.

Elsewhere

Joshua's studio work is at Headshots LA, and his personal photography and film work is at joshuamshelton.com. He also publishes the LA Acting Schools directory.