what makes a great headshot?

What Makes a Great Headshot?

A headshot is one of those simple yet important assets you’ll use over and over again in your career. It isn’t particularly expensive or time-consuming, but you’ll use this headshot to create an excellent first impression and connect with clients on your website, social media pages, email signature, business card, and more.

What should you look for in an excellent professional headshot? Let’s talk about the top factors that take a headshot from good to great.

A Look that Suits Your Brand

Your personal brand is what will set you apart in your career. Think of it as your professional persona, the way you want colleagues, clients, and others to perceive you. Your brand might be corporate and clean, creative, adventurous, or warm and sentimental, for example.

Your headshot should align with your personal brand. For instance, I might take a corporate headshot in my Mercer Island studio with a clean background. A headshot for a creative professional may be taken outdoors in a bright and colorful park, and for someone who wants a modern and urban brand, headshots taken in front of a cityscape could be perfect.

Comfort and Confidence

Your headshot is all about cultivating your professional image, and a cornerstone of that image is confidence. Not everyone is naturally comfortable in front of a camera, and that’s okay! Part of my job as a photographer is to help you feel at ease so I can give you headshots that look natural and confident rather than stiff and anxious. I’ll help you relax and, yes, even enjoy your headshot photo session!

Professional Quality

Quality is crucial in headshots. After all, you want to look like a put-together professional, and professionals hire experts to get the job done right.

Your headshot needs to reflect quality in several ways: the lighting and location, the image resolution, the quality of the props, and so on. Even with the high resolution of many phones’ cameras today, you can nearly always tell when a photo was taken by a professional because of the composition and lighting.

Strategic Simplicity

The phrase “less is more” holds true in an excellent headshot. A headshot is all about one subject: you. It’s important to avoid overly busy clothing, cluttered backgrounds, distractingly ornate makeup or hairstyles, or anything else that steals focus from you and your winning smile.

Note that this doesn’t mean every headshot should be on a plain white background while you’re wearing a black suit. There are plenty of ways to strike the balance between keeping it simple and incorporating your personal style, and that’s one more way a professional photographer’s training gives us an edge over DIY headshots.

Investing in Your Career with Professional Headshots

A headshot is an investment in the truest sense of the word. It empowers you to create a more relatable, memorable digital presence and make more of an impression on business contacts by (literally) putting a face to your name. In this world of digital communication, a headshot can make the difference between a lasting professional connection and a momentary interaction.

To see what headshots can do for you, book your Seattle-area headshots with Jaimié Birtel Photography today.