Prepare for Your Professional Portrait

What’s in frame?

Your professional portrait (sometimes called a corporate headshot) typically shows your waist to your head.

You might also take a thigh-to-head photo. This allows publishers to have options for cropping on various media, depending on how you use the portraits over time: staff webpage, newspaper story, TV segment, business card, LinkedIn, your World’s Best Boss coffee mug, … lots of formats.

Group portraits have the potential to show all the way to your shoes, depending on the size of the gathering space, so dress prepared if you’ll be in groups.

Here are tips for the issues and questions I most often encounter…

Clothing

Wear what you feel confident in and comfortable in. This is the most important guideline and goes for all dress codes, from casual to white tie.

Avoid graphics that will look awkward if part of it gets cut off. The classic example is the "My mom went to Vegas, and all I got was this t-shirt" shirt that ends up as a photo of your face and only the words "My mom."

The only really, really bad color choice is when your clothing imitates your skin color. Camouflage! Avoid.

If you have a solid color you know looks great on you in real life, it'll look great on you in the photo. Go for it. If you have no idea what color to wear, then consider a single warm or bright color. Or a very simple combo of two colors, one dark and one light (e.g. light heather blue blouse under a black cardigan). These selections also hold up well when your photo has to be displayed in black and white.

The simpler the better, favoring solid colors or large patterns. Cameras and digital screens have trouble with thin stripes and tight patterns. So one giant yellow flower on a blue scarf is much better than a print of tiny flowers on a gradient scarf, whereas an all-blue scarf is tops.

Makeup

Folks who don't wear makeup: Moisturize in advance to smooth any dry skin for the camera. Then do a quick wash and dry of your face just before your photo, or use a face wipe, to help prevent tiny drops of oil and sweat from catching the studio light and making you appear shiny and glossy on camera.

Folks who wear makeup: You don’t have to change what you normally wear. There’s no need to go extra or bolder or anything like that for the camera. Wear and look the way you feel comfortable.

Eyeglasses

Clean yo lenses! You don’t want giant fingerprints and smears and rain spots and sticky dust to cover your eyes in your photos.

Long hair

If you wear your hair loose for the photo, bring a hairbrush to keep the edges smooth and tidy.

Not sure whether to do your hair free or gathered? We can take both and find out what you like.

Enjoy it

Once you’ve shown up with your clothing and appearance choices, the most difficult parts are over! Your job from then on is to be yourself, have fun, and let the professional photographer worry about minutia.

Have you been overthinking your next deadline, your big client, or something else that has been commanding your mental attention lately? Kick em out of your head for these brief minutes and be present. It will come through in your portrait whether through your warmth, genuine smile, approachability, lightheartedness, confidence, commanding presence… whatever your personality. Letting preoccupations go and relaxing even for just this short time is absolutely the best way to naturally reveal, without even trying, the things that people who know you well and admire you get to see in you every day.

Do you have ideas about ways you would like to pose? Bring em! Do ya got nothing and feel like you have no clue what you’re doing in front of a camera? No problem! I’ll provide direction.

Do your best to trust your photographer • Photographers want you to like your portrait

It's totally cool to tell me things you typically do or don't like about your photo presentation. Please don't feel embarrassed by any of it.

There are lots of ways to work with the characteristics of our faces and bodies. I smile crooked which makes one side look happier than the other, and my eyebrow has a gash through it that only I notice because I remember how I got it. If that were you too, and you let me know, then I could angle the light off your brow and put your happy smile on the broad side. All the true you, without digital "cheating."

You got this

If you have other questions or concerns, bring them up any time before or even during your photo session.