Frequent, new, headshots are a must in this day and age.
Professional headshots are a must nowadays. Not too long ago they were the almost exclusively for CEOs, real estate agents, actors/actresses, dancers, tv personalities, and other performers. Now they’re also needed for social media pages, resumes, college applications, business pages, and such. If you have a business or are on the web, you need one.
Think about it. You have an online business. People are naturally going to wonder what you look like for a variety of reasons. They want to know what you look like if they are meeting up with you to discuss something, for sure.
However, people can tell a lot about someone by their headshot. Is this person serious enough to get a professional headshot or are they just using a blurry, badly cropped cell phone picture? Does this person give off an air of professional confidence if it’s a business page? Will it make the viewer feel relaxed and comfortable about hiring/working you if it’s a service industry website?
I could give endless situations. The fact is, your headshot sets the tone for whatever follows. A CEO headshot, for example, would not be visually identical as one for a fishing charter captain but the intent should be there – you can tell by looking at their images that they know what they’re doing, they’re good at what they do, and you can trust them.
A good headshot gives people an idea of your personality before they meet you. A smile portrays approachability. A serious look portrays determination. Make your expression match your personality.
As someone who has been doing them for years, I know what to look for and bring out. It’s amazing what a tip of the head, a small lift of the chin, a little twist of the body that way can do to your appearance and change the whole vibe of the image. As always, it’s all about posing and lighting.
And they have to be current. I can’t tell you how many people that I run into that use an image of themselves from 5 to 10+ years ago. Things change over time and your headshot should reflect that. Trends and needs change, too. If someone is looking for a headshot that will be used on LinkedIn, for example, I try to photograph them looking left so that, on the page, they are literally looking at their profile.
Typically you should get a new headshot every year or two. However, if you made a significant change to your appearance (switch from a blond to a redhead, cut off all your hair, got contacts, get some tattoos, et cetera), you should get a new headshot to reflect the new you.
Typically, when I work with someone, I try to get a decent headshot every time. They’re like potato chips, you simply can’t have just one. Different moods, different genres, different light, different hair styles, different make up applications. This way, if they like it, they have a new one ready to go for anything.
Take Isabella here. We teamed up last September for a headshot session as she needed one for college applications. This time around she was heading off to college and wanted new ones for her resume. We put our heads together and came up with a time to capture some more magic.
This session was strictly for headshots so all we needed was an hour and a decent location that gave us a variety of backgrounds to shoot against.
We did our thing and had a blast while doing it. As always the time flew past and it was time to part ways before I even knew it. One of the things I’ve grown to appreciate greatly recently is when very busy people carve out a chunk of their time for me for whatever reason. She was heading off to school the very next day so you know she had a million things on her mind and on her to-do list. But, even with all that, she set aside an hour for headshots with me.
That means a lot to me.
Photography by Mark K 