Most of the anxiety around a headshot is not about the photograph. It is about not knowing what the next forty minutes involve — where to stand, whether you are allowed to ask for another try, what happens if you hate all of them.
So here is the entire thing, in order.
Before the day
We talk briefly about where the images are going. A law firm bio, a LinkedIn profile, a conference programme, and a personal brand site all want slightly different photographs, and knowing which one determines wardrobe, crop, and how formal the lighting should be.
You will get a short note about what to bring. The short version: two or three options, on hangers, steamed, solid mid-to-deep colours, and a jacket if you own one that fits.
Arriving
Come as you are. Nothing needs to be done in the car.
The first few minutes are not photography. We talk, you look at the space, you put your things down. This sounds like filler and it is not — it is the difference between the first frames being usable and being throwaway. Almost nobody photographs well in the first ninety seconds of being in an unfamiliar room.
If you want to change or fix your hair, there is time and a mirror.
The lighting gets built for you
The lights are not preset before you arrive and left alone. Face shape, glasses, height, and hair all change where the key light should sit. That adjustment takes a couple of minutes and it happens with you standing in position, so a few frames get taken that are purely technical. Those do not count. Ignore them.
If you wear glasses, this is where reflections get solved. It is a normal part of the process, not a problem.
The shooting
This is the part people worry about, and it is the part where you have the least to do.
You will be directed continuously. Not “relax and be yourself” — actual instructions, one at a time:
- Turn your shoulders slightly away, keep your face toward me.
- Weight on the back foot.
- Push your forehead toward the lens. A little more. Stop.
- Chin down slightly. Too far. Back up half of that.
- Look at the wall, then on three come back to me.
That last one is a small trick that solves a real problem. A face arriving at the camera has life in it. A face that has been staring down a lens for forty seconds looks like it is waiting for a bus.
Some of it will feel absurd. Pushing your forehead forward feels like you are impersonating a turtle. On camera it lengthens the neck and separates the jaw from the neckline, and it looks nothing like it feels. Your instincts about your own body in front of a lens are unreliable — you have had no practice, and there is no reason you would.
You see the images as we go
Frames come up on screen during the session, not two weeks later. This matters for two reasons.
It removes the uncertainty. You stop wondering how it is going, because you can see how it is going.
And it lets you steer. If you look at a frame and something bothers you — the angle, the smile, the way a collar sits — say so and we fix it in the next set. That is far easier than discovering it in a gallery when everything is already packed up.
Changing looks
If you brought a jacket, we usually shoot with it and without it. Same lighting, same session, two genuinely different images: one that reads formal and authoritative, one that reads approachable.
That is typically the difference between leaving with one usable photo and leaving with a small library that covers a website bio, a LinkedIn profile, and a speaker headshot.
Choosing
At the end you go through the frames and pick favorites. You choose them — not me, and not a committee.
For corporate sessions this matters more than it sounds. People are dramatically more likely to actually use a photo they selected. A headshot the subject dislikes quietly never makes it onto LinkedIn, and then the whole exercise achieved nothing.
After
Selected images are retouched individually, by hand. Temporary things go, permanent things stay. Delivery is usually a few business days, and files come in both horizontal and square crops so the same session covers a website and a social profile without awkward re-cropping.
If you have a hard deadline, say so when booking and it gets scheduled around that.
How long the whole thing takes
An individual session is typically 45 minutes to an hour. Corporate team sessions run in shorter individual slots, scheduled so the working day is not wrecked.
Most people relax around the eight-minute mark. Almost everyone says a version of “that was easier than I expected” on the way out.
Ready? Book a session or look at headshot packages.