Five tips for Brilliant Profile Portraits

I’ve been shooting professional commercial portraits for a while now. I regularly travel to multiple branches of companies and carry out all their corporate profile portraits. Here are five tips for when you have a yours done, regardless of who shooting your portraits.

  • Hair: I’ve had so many people arrive to have their staff photo taken and their hair is a mess. It really does spoil a good portrait. Bringing a brush with you to the shoot is a good idea, we want your hair to be perfect. Photoshopping hair is difficult and over and above what is included in the job. It’s so much easier to get it right at the shoot.
  • Clothes: My advice is to dress as you would when meeting a new client or going to a business meeting. If you’re not sure, bring some changes.
  • Make Up: A natural look always works best The make-up you wear for a night out won’t work for a corporate head shot. If you normally wear a strong lipstick, wear it, but don’t go for a bold look if you don’t normally. Your corporate headshot needs to be  a good professional representation of yourself. 
  • Have a laugh: It’s not hard to tell when a smile is forced or if you look tense in a photo. I’ve always found that when you ask someone to smile it tends to look a little fake so I rarely ask people to smile. I make them laugh and then

I can shoot an entire range of expressions from a laugh down to a closed mouth smile. All you have to do is laugh at my stupid jokes and keep looking at me.
Glasses: If you normally wear glasses, if people are used to seeing you in them, wear them. If you only wear them occasionally and not when meeting people, don’t. If you aren’t sure we can do both on and off.

That’s it, the rest is up to me 🙂

Scroll to Top