What Makes a Successful Professional Studio Headshot?
Professional studio headshot photography needs to match certain specific criteria if you want it to be successful. In this article, I’ve summarised some of my experience after thousands of portraits, both in the field and in the studio. As stated in the title, we will only focus on portrait photography for professionals, be they freelancers or entrepreneurs, or employees of larger businesses.
What Makes a Successful Professional Studio Headshot?
No Silver Bullet for a Successful Studio Headshot
Let’s be clear from the start: there’s no magic formula for the perfect portrait. Multiple parameters matter, but the central factor is you. The photographer’s job is making you feel confident and comfortable. Everything else flows from that.
What follows comes from field experience, not theory.
Number 1: instilling confidence in you
When I began considering what makes a successful professional headshot I discovered there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. There are numerous factors involved, but arguably the most crucial is the photographer’s ability to instil confidence and happiness in their subject. This was a key lesson I learned early on in my career as a professional portrait photographer. My first client was a lady in her mid-40s who appeared stunning but felt otherwise. I believe no one teaches you how to boost someone’s self-esteem but I’ve realised it’s the most important criterion for creating a successful professional studio headshot. I made it up as I went along, I suppose it’s the kind of skills that you pick up in the field, not from books.
My most important task in this instance is to make the person feel comfortable and reassure them that they look good. My mantra is the following: you may not like yourself in a photograph when you come in, but when you depart, you will fall in love with yourself. It makes my clients laugh, bu
t honestly, this is the most important part of my work. Having said that, there are many other areas worthy of note regarding professional portrait photography. Here are a few items that I think stand out; my list might not be comprehensive, but I think most of them are here anyway.
2. Technical Mastery Matters
The second criterion might seem simple, but I’ve encountered so many professional studio headshots that are either blurry or technically questionable that mastering portrait photography technique is worth placing on top of my list. My favourite analogy is that of a concert musician. What truly distinguishes top musicians isn’t technique; it’s their ability to infuse emotion into their music.
The music metaphor
While countless musicians worldwide could play as well as the late Alfred Brendel, great artists like him have this unique emotional connection to their art. Similarly, a photographer who can’t capture a piece perfectly will never be able to infuse it with emotion. Not only will he or she be fiddling with the buttons on his or her camera instead of looking at and talking to you, but the result will be too blurry, too bright, too dark, or too awkward, and there are only so many miracles post-production can do to a photo.
This artistic principle applies to professional portrait photography too. It’s not an easy task; one needs to master strobe settings and lighting, ensuring it’s good but not overpowering, choose the right angle and frame one’s subject properly, all the while talking to the customer and making her or him feel comfortable.
The photographer must also ensure that the depth of field (the portion of your photo which will be sharp) is right. In the case of studio photography, I’m used to a rather broad depth of field. As one will discover later on, indoors portrait photography with natural light (with or without fill flash) is very different with regard to depth of field.
Only virtuosos can forget about technical mastery
To cut a long story short, technique is only useless, as long as it is mastered perfectly. virtuosoes alone can forget about it because it’s no longer a problem.
Let’s put that one on the side for now, and let’s move on to other important points that we need to make in order to make a successful studio headshot.
3. Landscape or portrait? And what is the aim of your photo?
I’m sure you think that “portrait mode” is only applicable to portrait photography and “landscape photography” is exclusively dedicated to taking photos in the open. Well, this isn’t the case.
Look at the picture at the top of this piece. It was made for a blogger who often uses his headshots for blog posts or the press. You wouldn’t dream of using a portrait mode headshot in a newspaper feature unless you are squeezed into one of the narrow columns of a broadsheet.
The reason I’m mentioning this is that one has to focus on the purpose of a professional studio headshot before it is taken. As a rule I always spend time browsing the Web in search of information about my client in order to understand her or his job and the kind of company she or he works for. Very often, my customers are working in businesses or industries that I know. It’s a great opportunity for us to exchange about their market or occupation.
From then on I will discuss the aim of the picture with the customer and get a feel for what she or he wants to do with it. This will determine everything. From the orientation, the framing, the kind of pose and smile that is requested and we’ll both know exactly what we are trying to achieve.
This isn’t trivial, it’s one of the most important parts of the job too.
4. Choosing the right background colour
That item is a lot more straightforward than the previous two. Photo studio headshots usually resort to three different colours of background: white, grey or black. This is a bit conservative undoubtedly but opting for one of those you’ll make sure you don’t make any mistake.
As to LinkedIn however, I sometimes recommend something a little bit more jazzy. Indeed, the main problem with this platform is uniformity. Thousands of profiles are lined up with no chance of standing out from the crowd.
That is unless you decide to take a bold step and remove the background and replace it with a bright coloured layer. You may of course keep this very image with a more subdued background for other purposes. Obviously, we’re here to help you in case you have no clue how to do that. At the end of the day, it will be your choice.
5. Donning the right kind of clothes
Choosing what kind of clothes you wear for your photo studio headshot session is often mind-boggling. Should I wear the blue or white shirt or blouse? The red or green skirt or trousers? First and foremost, let’s review what you should not wear.
Avoid checkered or stripy shirts. The latter are an absolute non-no with video, but they don’t look good on still pictures either. Plain-coloured garments look better for studio headshots. Besides, if we are talking about a studio headshot from the waist up, the kind of trousers you wear matter very little.
With that in mind, what matters most is that you don the clothes you like best. Feel free to bring a change of clothes with you if you want different shots with different colours or outfits.
6. The right profile for your photo studio headshot session
What should be the right profile for you? Bias left or bias right? Most people coming to our studio have no clue as to which profile they favour. Yet, most of them have a favourite one.
I am used to taking different pictures with both profiles and let our clients decide which one is best for them. Ultimately, they are the ones who will need to feel comfortable with their portrait picture.
7. The right kind of smile
Once again, there is no size-ft-all answer to the right kind of smile question. What matters is that you feel comfortable with it. For CVs and LinkedIn, it’s probably best to avoid an ear-to-ear grin, though and opt for a closed-mouth smile.
Just so you feel comfortable, some of our clients had rather not smile at all and there’s nothing wrong with that. A stern look will suit certain persons who don’t like or don’t know how to smile in front of a camera. Just look at my friend Olivier in the following picture, he has this I-mean-business kind of look that suits him very well.
8. Ultimately, who decides that a professional studio headshot is successful?
At the end of the day, photographers should never choose a picture on behalf of their customers. This is a principle we are very keen to implement. The reason for this isn’t that we don’t want to take responsibility for the end result.
The rationale is that once you leave the studio, you must be happy with your headshot, for we will not be around anymore.
Of course, we’re here to help and advise our clients. Yet, my main task when we select pictures is to recommend that this shot or that one should be discarded and explain why. Indeed, whether we are, as photographers, happy with our shots is of no importance at all. What really matters is that you like how you look.
Very often, we have clients coming back to us a few days later or commenting on our Google Review page and stating that they never thought they could look so good in a profile picture. That’s our best reward, the proof that we’ve done our job properly and served our customers right.
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Je suis photographe et aquarelliste. Je pratique la photographie depuis l'enfance et la photographie numérique depuis 1995. J'en ai fait mon activité principale en 2021. Je possède un studio photo dans le 15e arrondissement de Paris
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