A better headshot starts with a better conversation

Most people who contact us already have a fairly clear reason for doing it. They need a new LinkedIn headshot. The team page is out of date. Someone has changed roles. The company has moved office and the website no longer looks like the business people actually walk into. That is usually enough to know what sort of photography session we are talking about. It is not always enough to know what photographs we should make.

Before we start shooting, we normally spend a bit of time talking. Sometimes that happens on the phone before the session. Sometimes it happens when someone arrives at the studio carrying a few jackets and asks us which one will work. With a business, it can mean looking through their website, talking about where the photographs will end up, or asking why they need office photography in the first place. We call it a mini consultation, although it is really just a useful conversation before anyone starts worrying about what to do with their hands.

A headshot can be doing more than one job

For some people, one straightforward headshot really is all they need. Quite often, though, something else comes up once we start asking where the image will be used and what has changed since the last one.

We recently photographed someone who had moved into a more senior position and was already thinking about where his career might go next. That gave us something more useful to work with than “I need a LinkedIn photo”.

As we looked through the images, some felt warmer and more approachable. Others carried a little more authority. One expression suited the company website particularly well, while another made more sense for LinkedIn and the kind of position he hoped to move towards over the next few years.

There is a limit to how far you can push that. A photograph should still look and feel like the person standing in front of the camera. Dressing somebody up as the managing director five years before they are ready for the job would be ridiculous. But there is often enough variation available in expression, posture, clothing and lighting to make a photograph that will not feel out of date as soon as the next promotion arrives.

The same thing happens with businesses

The same problem turns up with organisations, only on a larger scale. “We need some staff photos and some shots around the office” is a perfectly reasonable starting point. Once we start asking what those photographs are going to be used for, the job can look quite different.

A photograph intended for the top of a website may need enough space around the subject for text. Recruitment material often needs something less formal than the annual report. Some images will be used on social media, others in proposals, brochures or presentations. A staff portrait may eventually need to work as a square headshot, a vertical crop and a cut-out with the background removed.

Knowing those uses beforehand can change surprisingly little on set while making the finished photographs much more useful. A small framing change might allow an image to work as a website banner. An extra portrait variation might give somebody a second image for speaking, media or a future role without requiring another session six months later.

Sometimes the session takes us somewhere else

There are also occasions when the conversation keeps changing after the camera comes out. We recently photographed a younger client who needed updated images connected with formal gowns. She arrived with several wardrobe options, so before shooting we talked through which ones were likely to photograph well, what kind of images she liked and whether the photographs might have uses beyond the immediate requirement.

Once we started, she turned out to be unusually easy to direct. Small adjustments to her shoulders, arms and posture produced very different shapes. The moodier photographs suited her. Black and white worked well. As the session developed, some of the strongest photographs were becoming less about showing the gown and more about the person wearing it.

That opened up a different conversation. We started talking about whether she might want to explore more modelling, what a stripped-back black-and-white session could look like, whether a grungier urban style might suit her, and whether her athletic build could work well for fitness imagery. They had booked some updated headshots for modelling, not a full modelling portfolio. There was no grand plan to turn the session into one. It was simply something that became visible once she was in front of the camera.

We look at the photographs while we shoot

That is one of the reasons we like working with the images on screen as we shoot. We are not relying entirely on the plan we had twenty minutes earlier. We can see whether the clothes are doing what we expected, whether an expression is working, whether the background is helping, or whether something more interesting has appeared.

Clients can see it too, which is often useful. An outfit that seemed like the obvious choice at home may not photograph as well as the one brought along as a backup. A person who thought they wanted a big smile may prefer the quieter expression once they see both side by side. Occasionally we take the photograph everyone came for and then notice another one sitting very close to it.

Before we pick up the camera

There is no benefit in making this more complicated than it needs to be. Plenty of people really do need one straightforward headshot for LinkedIn or a staff page. Once we know that, we can get on with making it.

Clients know their own careers, businesses and immediate needs far better than we do. What we bring is experience of seeing how photographs actually get used after the session is over. After enough headshots, team pages, media images, websites and corporate shoots, certain patterns become fairly easy to recognise.

So before we start moving lights around and telling somebody to bring their chin down half a centimetre, we ask a few questions. By the time we pick up the camera, we have a much better idea of what we are actually trying to make.