Why a professional headshot?
A carefully chosen personal profile image is a key part of publicly representing yourself, your brand and your business. As humans we are visual, the first thing someone will see is your image, it’s your chance to make a great first impression. You owe it to yourself and your career or business, you work hard on everything else right? Like all first impressions, your headshot should instantly give a feel for who you are and what you represent, its a little bit like a handshake. It needs to look and feel like you, genuine, and more relaxed headshots are the way forward.
Don’t take yourself too seriously. Relax and show your personality.
Your business and personal brand promotion is not the place for a selfie or a party candid, if you want to be perceived as professional, you should look professional, no matter how great you think you look, any headshot that has other people’s body parts cropped out around your head will bring you down. Yes, selfie’s are fun.. and fine for memories and friends, but a quality headshot really should be used in your personal branding.
Lighting is important. If you use natural light, never shoot at midday…its a strong source and creates harsh shadows. If you’re indoors, window light can be amazing, try a combination of natural and artificial light, it often works very well.
Try losing the suit and wear something that promotes what you do and your style.
Framing plays a big part in the image, make sure horizons are straight, move the clutter and anything in the background, distractions like this can be overwhelming and take focus away from you. Keep it clean and simple.
Work with a few angles, we do have good and bad sides and angles,once you have taken a few look through and make sure that you have chosen the best angle.
Clothing is very important and depending on what you do will make a big impact on results! Wearing anything with words, may just confuse the image and again take that focus from you. You might want to steer clear of complicated patterns, stay with solid block colour or subtle patterns.
Regular updates are important, once every 8 months to a year is a good rule of thumb. Any changes in your personal branding that you make or a career change may also create a need for an update too.
A professional photographer with an eye for detail and quality, both in studio or on location will provide a professional photo session and high quality edited images. For anyone taking his or her career seriously or that may be self-employed, this is a very small financial investment to be able to have a professional headshot that can be used for personal branding.
It’s up to you on how to proceed and whether or not it is time to update your headshot. Maybe you already have an awesome set of personal branding images, thats great news! but maybe a friend or colleague may not have? Make a difference for someone else and please share this article.
Lee Knowles Photographer. LKFOTO
A Port Noarlunga Photographer making quality professional portraits South Australia wide