In this day and age, getting into your chosen profession is harder than ever. The job market around the world is in a tough spot, with many people finding it difficult to enter into their dream jobs. However, something that can help set you apart from the herd is a solid professional headshot.
Taking the time to invest in a professional-quality headshot is a great idea. Depending on the field you want to get into, a headshot can help to show off your proficiency in certain skills. For example, in modeling or acting careers, a headshot is one of the most important parts of your resume.
Even for people just looking to get into a standard office job, a professional headshot can help make your application look and feel personalized, and make your prospective employer interested in you.
With all these benefits, you want to make sure you’re taking a good quality headshot. However for most people, access to professional level camera equipment can be prohibitively expensive. In this case, it’s a good idea to know how to get the best out of your phone camera.
To avoid having to shell out for a top-notch professional photographer, follow the below tips on how to take a professional headshot with your phone.
1. Check the Camera Quality
Ultimately, you’re going to be limited in the quality of the picture by the quality of the camera you use. The plus side, though, is that most modern day smartphones come equipped with some pretty fantastic cameras.
Now, each and every person has their own personal smartphone preference and, honestly, there isn’t a massive divide in the quality of cameras between most modern phones.
Something that’s important to know about your phone’s camera is the aspect ratio and resolution. Aspect ratio refers to the relationship between the width and height of an image while resolution determines the number of pixels displayed in the image.
Aspect ratio and resolution work together to create the overall sharpness of your image, and can have a significant impact on the quality of the image if it needs to be resized. Because headshots can be used in a variety of ways, you should think about what size of image you’re likely to need as well as the format it will be displayed in to determine which aspect ratio and resolution you should shoot in.
Most smartphone cameras have an aspect ratio of 4:3 but the resolution of the cameras differ wildly. Try to ensure you have a camera with a high number of pixels to give yourself flexibility in what the images you take can be used for.
2. Select an Appropriate Outfit
When taking professional headshots, it’s important to remember that these images will represent you in your workplace or when you’re trying to make an impression on hiring managers. As a result, you should carefully consider what to wear, and make your choice based on how the outfit can suit your needs.
Having a goal for your headshot can help you to select the best outfit option. For example, if you’re looking to land a job in a specific industry, like as a chef, having a headshot of you in a chef uniform will help to immediately show hiring managers and collaborators what your specialty skills are.
On the other hand, if you aren’t certain what industry you want to get into, or if there isn’t a set uniform for that industry, the outfit you wear can help to show off your personality and show attributes that can be generalized to many industries.
Try doing some research on what others in your industry are wearing, and look at how those clothing options make you feel about the person wearing them. For example, if you’re working in an office, does having a headshot in a suit give off the impression that you’re put together and capable when compared to a button up shirt giving off a more approachable and friendly vibe.
Once you have down what sort of outfit you’ll be wearing, you can go about selecting the clothing items themselves. There are several important considerations to factor in when selecting specific items for use in a headshot.
For example, the color of clothing that you wear in a headshot can have a major impact on the overall quality of the photo. Bright colors like neons can draw attention to the clothes so think carefully about using them in a headshot photoshoot. Normally, you want the focus to be on your face.
If you go with a more neutral color palette, make sure to pick muted hues that don’t wash you out. This refers to choosing colors that work with the natural undertone of your skin to reduce shadows and avoid reflection of light onto your face when taking the picture. This can help make your face look brighter and can make you seem more alert and awake in the image—good qualities for a professional headshot.
These outfit considerations are especially important to think about when taking professional photos at home with a phone camera. Unlike in a more traditional scenario, you won’t have the advice of a professional photographer, nor are you likely to be trained in careful editing of shadows and spots from the skin. Taking the time to reflect on your outfit choices can help reduce the potential need for touch ups later.
3. Choose the Best Poses
Much like how different outfit choices can change the viewer’s perception of your image, so can different poses. You should put an equal amount of thought into the pose you want to use for your professional headshot and think about what this pose says about you and the way you work.
For example, posing while performing an action like working in a laboratory can show off specialty qualifications or experience you have without the need for the viewer to go into your CV. This can help attract recruiters for particular roles who might be scanning through thousands of potential candidates on sites like LinkedIn.
If you aren’t looking to show off a particular skill, you can also use poses to display attributes. For example, posing while sitting at a desk may give off the impression that you’re hard working while smiling straight into the camera might signal your approachability and congeniality.
In addition, having the right pose for your particular face or body type can help make you look professional. Make sure to show good posture and try changing the angle from which you take the image to explore how it affects the way light plays on your face.
Changes in lighting can allow you to avoid shadows on your face, which can make you look tired or withdrawn. Taking a photo from the best angle can give you the best output for your camera and make it so you don’t have to do touch-ups later.
When taking photos on your phone at home, you don’t have the benefit of a professional photographer to give you tips on what looks good in a professional setting. So here are some general rules for taking professional headshots:
- Avoid covering your face. The face should be the focus of the image, so make sure to take pictures that give a clear and unobstructed view.
- Avoid having distractions in the photo. It can be tempting to use props in professional headshots, but this can sometimes give a contrived quality to the photos if too much focus is drawn away from the subject of the photo (you).
- Make eye contact. In most cases, making eye contact with the camera will enhance your photos. It can help to give a sense of connection between the viewer and you, and will make them more likely to be interested in meeting and talking to you.
- Be aware of your hands/clothing. The worst feeling is when you take a really nice photo of your smile and then realize that you were doing something weird with your hands and the photo is unusable. Keep in mind what your whole body is doing—or at least the parts that will be visible in frame.
Luckily, using an AI headshot generator like PixelPose simplifies posing by automatically creating pose variations from your pictures (but more on that soon!)
4. Find an Appropriate Background
The background you choose for your photo can have a significant effect on the overall quality of the image. This can impact many factors, from how visible you seem in the image to showing off past collaborators to even creating negative experiences through clutter or distractions in the background.
Picking an appropriate background usually is the first thing you should decide when taking your photo. The background will give you an idea of the location of the photo, which can be incredibly important when determining factors like lighting.
It also helps to establish the goal for the image. For example, taking a photo on a sunny beach will have a much different vibe than taking a picture against a solid colored wall. In general, try going for a neutral background to avoid taking focus and awareness away from your image. The only exceptions to this should be when the location or background has a potential benefit in showing expertise.
Make sure to clear your background if you’re using something like a contemporary office or taking a picture at home. Not everyone has the space for a solid colored wall good for taking photos against. And if you do decide to take your picture in a setting,like in front of a bookshelf, then ensure that you have at least tidied up the area around where the picture will be taken.
Making sure to have a clean space around you helps give off that professional quality you’re looking for in headshots for work purposes. This will help you maintain your image as a professional and makes you look far more competent than if you’re in the middle of a cluttered image.
5. Consider the Lighting
Another major consideration for taking a professional headshot at home is the lighting. Lighting has a massive impact on the quality of images, from being able to erase dark shadows on the face to giving highlights and making you seem bright and aware.
Having bad lighting can make your image seem dark and unprofessional. Bad lighting often looks like light coming in from the wrong angle as to where the image is being taken from. If you have a light source, you generally want to take the photo with you facing into the light source.
You can play around with the effects of light in terms of changing the angle of your face. This will help create contrast and reduce the impact of blemishes and changes in skin tone. It can also help create mood for an image. In general, bright lighting gives off cheeriness whereas darker lighting gives off a more moody and mysterious vibe.
Bad lighting can also be too harsh. Most artificial lights can be overly bright in photos, and this can create shine that looks like sweat or oil on your face as well as creating overly heavy shadows in contrast areas. This often results in a poor-quality photo.
Most people find natural lighting to be their best bet for taking a good photo. Softer natural light is more forgiving and can help hide blemishes or imperfections to make you seem more professional. However, there are issues with natural lighting in that it’s often hard to find in the appropriate background. It can also be transient. If the sun goes behind a cloud at the wrong moment, it can completely change the outcome of the image.
Professional photography studios often have incredibly complex lighting rigs in order to ensure that they have a good quality of light no matter the time of day. Because you’re only trying to take photos for one person, you may have more flexibility in the time you’re able to take your photos. So consider taking photos throughout the day to determine where your best lighting is.
Alternatively, you can purchase lighting aides like ring lights, which help create that natural light effect while also being strong enough to give good lighting in the evening hours. Depending on your time and money constraints, investing in some lighting tools may help to give photos taken on your phone a more professional look and feel.
6. Utilize AI
Artificial intelligence has come a long way in recent years, with a variety of apps and tools created specifically for solving different puzzles. When it comes to taking professional quality headshots, there are several ways that AI tools like PixelPose can help to make your life easier.
These tools can range from simply helping you select a background, outfit, or pose, or go all the way to generating artificial images of you to use as the headshot itself. Whether you use the artificial image is up to you and you can always simply recreate the image once you’ve selected your favorite pose, background, and outfit.
Try searching through a range of options in terms of outfit, pose, and background. These artificial images can be a great way of planning out what you want your photo to look like if you decide to recreate it in real life. There’s nothing worse than spending money on a particular outfit only to decide later that it doesn’t fit in with the background you had planned.
Artificial intelligence has some significant benefits in that it can help make professional quality images from simple phone cameras. These pictures are generated in incredibly short time frames, anywhere from a few hours to 30 minutes depending on the tool you use.
These pictures come from a variety of “seed” images that you upload onto the AI photo generator website, which gives the generator’s algorithm the ability to recreate your face. It’s important to make sure you use good quality photos from a range of angles to ensure that your image is accurate. You want to make sure that your headshot is recognizable so that if you meet with recruiters or collaborators in person you look as expected.
Photo generation through AI tools can be a great way to explore a variety of options or help you get over insecurities. Some people are shy when taking photos, or feel unphotogenic. AI tools can help give you a good quality image that you have full control over to make you more confident.
To learn more about the process for generating AI images, or to create your own custom gallery of professional quality headshots without the need for fussing around with your phone, check out PixelPose today!