Top Reasons For Doing Professional Business Portraits
- First Impressions Last
Two things remain irreversible: time and a first impression. When you create your profile on a professional networking site such as LinkedIn, the photo you choose to represent yourself defines who you are. Very often it determines whether you receive the opportunity for a face-to-face interview, which is the first step towards hiring. Using a professional business portrait you secure your potential future employers’ first impression of you, as determined by you. Your portrait should illustrate your resume, an engaging image that allows your true character shines through.
. - Stand Out From The Crowd
There are more than 740 million members in LinkedIn in 2021 and research has shown that a profile with a picture makes it 14 times more likely to be viewed. This will be 3 times higher if your image is a professional business portrait.
. - Engaging portraits equal branding
If you own, run, or sell for a business, potential customers and clients associate you with your business, just like Tesla is Elon Musk and vice versa. Your headshot is itself marketing material of your company.
. - Fostering Trust With A Personal Touch
Beyond social networking platforms, for corporate websites headshots of your staff helps connect your service with a face; enlivening the narratives in the “About” page of your website, giving your business a personal touch. Clients want to see who they are conducting business with.
Tips to look good in business head shots / professional corporate portraits
- What To Wear
This will often depend on your company & the industry you work in. If you work in professional services such as lawyer or banker, you will want your photos to project authority & knowledge. Whereas a creative copywriter will want something more creative and relaxed. These attributes are often represented by the clothes we wear.
In General:- Wear clothes that are comfortable and that make you look great
- Avoid busy patterns. Solid colours look better than distracting patterns, these can often confuse the eye in a photo.
- Choose classic & timeless styles of clothing. This year’s hottest fashion may look great now, but in a year’s time will date your photo.
- Fitted clothing that enhances your figure looks better in a photograph than shapeless baggy clothing.
- For Men:
- The standard business look is a solid dark suit jacket, white/light coloured shirt and tie.
- A casual business look is often a jacket and open-collar shirt, shirt and tie with no jacket, or dress shirt on it’s own (but avoid plain white shirt if by it own).
- Bring a few different jackets, shirt colours and ties so we have choices for the photo.
- For Women:
- The standard business look should wear a solid suit with blouse.
- For a no-jacket casual look, bring various coloured blouses, you might consider avoiding red
- Don’t overdress.
- Keep jewellery extremely simple, remember the picture should be about your face, not your jewellery.
- Do not wear short sleeves or sleeveless top/dress as this can draw attention to your shoulders/arms.
- What To Prepare
- Please arrived with hair styled and makeup already applied.
- We have a list of makeup artists recommendations. Let us know if that is helpful.
- If you plan to do makeup by yourself, keep it simple and make sure it feels good for you. If you normally wear a strong lipstick, then thats fine, but don’t go for a bold look if you don’t normally look like that. You want the image to be a good professional representation of yourself whom you would like to present in the real live interview.
- If you are doing your own hair, remember to bring some hair product (e.g. wax, fixative spray), a hair brush or comb.
- For men not retaining a beard or mustache, please shave before the shoot.
- If you want us to do onsite shooting in your office, please prepare a mirror.
