A good headshot can help you look more professional, enhance your social media profiles, and improve your networking capabilities. The question is, how do you get the right headshot? There are many considerations to bear in mind, from the equipment you use to the finishing touches through editing.
Start With Examples
Examples of good headshots can be a great place to start. There are no hard rules for what a headshot has to be or what it should look like. Obviously, you’ll want something that looks professional and helps you look your best, but beyond that, you have significant flexibility.
Accordingly, looking at examples of great headshots from other people can spark inspiration and help you figure out how you want to appear to others. Set aside some of your favorite headshots. Ask yourself: what do they have in common? How could you replicate this for yourself? What types of people seem to incorporate different techniques? Would those techniques look good applied to your headshot?
Understand Your Personal Brand
Next, work on understanding your personal brand. Your personal brand is an encapsulation of your professional identity, often helping you form good first impressions with other people and consolidate all your content and social media posts under a single umbrella.
Your personal brand should include elements like your industry, your niche, your personality, and your target audience. Considering these factors, what type of headshot would help you look your best? A young actor trying to get roles is going to need a very different headshot than a lawyer trying to build a solo practice. Both of these people will need a different headshot than a military veteran starting an intense fitness training camp.
Depending on your personal brand, you may want more or less color. You may want a big smile or stoicism. You may want something totally normal or totally different from everything else on social media. It all depends on you.
Work With a Professional
You need your headshot to look professional. Accordingly, you should consider hiring a professional photographer to take your headshot. If you can’t afford or don’t want a professional photographer, at least work with someone who knows their way around a camera. You can edit and polish your headshot later, but you should at least start with something workable and high-resolution.
Prepare Yourself
When it’s time to take your initial photo, spend some time preparing yourself.
- Dress. Even though your photo is mostly going to focus on your head, you should dress professionally. If you’re simply wearing a T-shirt, people may not take you as seriously – even if the collar of that shirt is barely noticeable.
- Grooming. Obviously, you’ll also need to practice good grooming. Make sure you’re clean, take care of your skin, style your hair, wear makeup, and do whatever else you feel is necessary to look your best.
- The finishing touches. This is also a good opportunity to add a few finishing touches. For example, wearing glasses can help you seem more intelligent. Wearing colorful earrings can help you seem more outgoing. Is there anything you can add to help yourself stand out even more?
- The look. There is some evidence to show that a smile can make you look more confident, competent, and likable. Accordingly, most people benefit by smiling sincerely in their headshots. However, this isn’t always the case. As we’ve mentioned, the nature of your headshot should depend on your personal brand, your target audience, and other factors. In some cases, a serious, stoic look can pay off more.
Editing and Polishing
Once you have a solid headshot to work with, you can begin editing and polishing it. This is your chance to apply filters, edit things out, and generally punch up the photo so you look better. Thanks to modern AI tools, this is easier than ever before; even if you have no photo editing experience, you can usually improve the appearance of your photo with just a few simple clicks.
Updating
Keep in mind that your professional headshot should change as you grow, as you evolve, and as you progress in your career. Again, there are no hard rules for how often you need to update your headshot, but you should do so as regularly as circumstances demand. For many people, updating a headshot is something to do annually or at least once every few years.
With these strategies and insights, you should be in a much better position to take a perfect (or nearly perfect) headshot of yourself. Once that headshot is in place, your social media profiles will be truer to your personality, more inviting, and more impressive to the people in your target audience.