20 Headshot Tips from Professional Portrait Photographers

Summary: This article will provide you with various headshot tips before, during, and after headshot taking, and guide you through more shooting details to ensure your professional headshots.

The head shot is crucial to our first impression of business cooperation, job seeking, and other official occasions. Taking a professional head shot plays an important role in it. But head shot shooting is not easy, you need to pay attention to a lot of headshot tips and methods of shooting to present the final professional headshot photos.

In this article, I will tell you how to take a professional headshot and comprehensive headshot tips in the headshot shooting process. Even some tips you may not have noticed will improve your photography awareness and help you shoot better standard headshots. Let’s see how to do it.

What is a headshot?

A professional head shot is a face portrait that focuses on your head and shoulder. Standard headshots are used for official profiles, resumes, business cards, social media, company cooperation, etc.

Headshot Tips: Preparation Before Headshot Taking

Professional Photographer

Every photographer has a personal style of shooting. Photographers have different areas of specialization. So, when hiring one, you can browse their headshot photography styles first and compare more photographers to choose the one you like.

Where to find a professional photographer?

The easiest way is to search Google “professional headshots near me” or “headshot near me”. Then you will find some nice head shot studios for you. By the way, it is more convenient and persuasive to ask friends or family for recommendations. A familiar photographer is better than a studio online.

Headshot Outfit

What to wear for headshots? A business headshot photography requires a full simple suit, tie, and dark colors. You can also wear other clothes you like but don't be flashy. Often the simpler and more decent, the more professional your headshot will look.

• No big patterns and logos (Company logo excepted)
• Plain and pure colors
• A full professional suit is better
• Bow tie and tie are optional, depending on the head shot use case

Headshot Examples

Before taking head shots, you need to browse some professional headshot examples, this will help you find your headshot style and make your head shot shooting smoothly process. There are 10 headshot styles including:

• Male Business Headshots
• Female Business Headshots
• Modern Corporate Headshots
• Office Headshots
• Outdoor Headshots
• LinkedIn Headshots
• Studio Headshots
• Casual Headshots
• Model Headshots
• Realtor Headshots

Communicate with Photographer

Communicate with the photographer about the shooting style, shooting scenarios, and headshot background, and ask for shooting headshot tips, although sometimes the photographer's advice may be strange. Talk to the photographer in advance if you need monochrome head shot photos.

Can I Take Headshots At Home?

Of course, you can choose to take professional headshots at home. All the tips for headshots are also suitable for head shot taking at home. As a familiar place, home to take head shots may make you feel more comfortable and at ease.

Skincare

Take good care of your face. A head shot is a total face portrait. You need to prepare your skincare a week in advance, eat less greasy and heavily spiced foods, and eat a light diet that will keep your skin in better condition. If there are blemishes on your skin, proper application of medicines can also speed up the repair of your skin. Or you can fix blemishes at post-editing by using the face retouch editor. You just need to take your headshot confidently and let the face editor do the rest.

Natural Expression

Face expressions are important. Stand in front of the mirror and find your comfortable and natural expressions. Try practicing how to show your smile naturally in front of a mirror ahead of time. If you can't find a natural smile, you can try holding a chopstick in your mouth.

Headshot Makeup

Professional head shot photos do not require heavy makeup; excessive makeup will only make your headshot unprofessional. Try using light makeup to make your photos look more natural. But if you're afraid the light makeup won't look good, you can use a makeup photo editor to beautify your photos online.

Hairstyle for Professional Headshot

Try on a new hairstyle for your headshot photos. This head shot may be used for a long time, so choosing a suitable hairstyle matters. You can try to use a hairstyle changer to find your best headshot hairstyle, or if you need to lengthen your hair but don’t know what it will look, a long hair filter is also convenient for you.

If your hair is too dry, the hair will affect the head shot effect. You can wash before the shoot and apply hair care oil to make hair smooth. For professional headshots, it needs you to make a change.

Headshot Tips During Headshot Taking

Relax

Don't be too stiff in your limbs when shooting. Try taking several deep breaths and stretching your body to relieve the tension of the shoot. If that doesn’t work, try to lie down for minutes to fully rest your body, don’t push yourself for this fatigue shooting.

Take Multiple Headshot Photos

After a set of photos has been taken, you can pause the shooting to check the effect of the photos already taken, and then adjust the subsequent shots based on previous headshot photos. Choose the best headshot from multiples.

Glasses: Wear Or Not Wear?

If you usually wear glasses at work, put glasses on when you take headshot photos. if you decide to take headshots without glasses, please remember there is a red mark on the nose from the glasses. Try to use makeup to get rid of it.

Bring A Mirror

Bring a small mirror so that you can check your makeup, hair and clothes anytime and anywhere. Make sure you look your best when you shoot.

Headshot Poses

Choose the right headshot pose according to different photography styles. Good posture exudes confidence and professionalism. For example, if you are shooting a business headshot used for a LinkedIn headshot, please stand or sit upright, arms crossed, and look serious.

Props and Accessories

Don't obsess over shooting props and accessories. If you shoot a business headshot, with an official desk, chair, glasses, and delicate hair will make you look more professional and trustworthy. Tiny and simple accessories can show your taste, but it is not the center of the headshot photos. Fancy jewels are not recommended.

Bright Eyes

If you are nearsighted and can't focus your eyes on the lens, you can wear glasses or contact lenses to be better. If you don't focus your eyes on the camera, the headshot photograophy may end up looking dull.

Headshot Tips Afterward Headshot Taking

Headshot Sizes

Main steam social media and official place have different requirements for headshot sizes. Usually, there are 1x1, 2x3, 4x3, 8x10, and more headshot sizes and ratios. Which one is the standard headshot size? It depends. So, remember to save your headshot photography and digital headshots in multiple ratios and sizes so that you can use them on different platforms in the future.

If you only have one headshot size photo, never mind, you can use a headshot crop tool to change sizes and ratios easily. Use image cropper to crop your headshot into professional head shot size in a snap.

PS: Save the original headshot photography, do not use compressed photos, it will blur the image.

Keep It Updated

Update your head shot photos periodically, people always change themselves in different circumstances, and so does your headshot photography.

Headshot Retouch

Headshot photos are a good way to show your face and identity. If you want to do a little makeup or face retouching on your headshot, that’s okay. But don’t over retouch the headshot and make it unreal and too perfect. People won’t like that fake feeling, including headshots. So a little bit of retouch is better.

Generate Professional and Standard Headshots With AI

How to take a professional head shot may always be a problematic thing for most people. Taking a head shot includes a complex process, you need to get prepared for time and effort. But there is a super easy method for you now.

you can choose Fotor AI headshot generator to easily generate a professional headshot automatically. The AI headshot generator has integrated with lasted face learning machines that will detect your face quickly. Plus, it also has combined multiple face models to easily catch your face features and generate your digital headshot precisely.

With one click, easily create professional and realistic HD AI headshots and profile pictures using Fotor online AI headshot generator. Various headshot styles are optional, business headshots, anime headshots, avatar headshots for resumes, social media, etc. You just need one click to upload your selfies and then you will receive your standard headshots with ease. Make your profile headshot stand out in a snap.

I will guide you on how to use Fotor AI headshot generator step by step.

1. Click the “Generate Headshots Now” button to get started.
2. Upload multiple life photos or selfies.
3. Next, choose the professional headshot style. Fotor will automatically detect the details of your face and generate vivid and good-looking AI headshots within seconds.
4. Finally, preview and download the generated AI headshots for resumes, social media profile images, and more.

Conclusion

This article provides you with a variety of headshot tips, to help you solve some of the problems that may arise before, during, and after shooting. And I recommend you the useful tool Fotor AI headshot generator to help you save time and effort to generate professional headshots easily, come and try it.