Picking your choices after your headshot session.
You booked a session with a great headshot photographer and had a great shoot (hopefully) and you’ve been excitedly waiting to get a look at the proofs – whether you’re an actor getting new headshots or from the corporate world getting business headshots the process of choosing your best shots is, by and large, the same.
The proofs you receive will not have been fully edited. They will have been colour-corrected out of the camera and possibly cropped but that’s about it. Photoshop is a great tool when in the hands of a skilled editor so you must try to remember this! Dark circles and some lines or stray hairs can be fixed but it is important not to remove any of the features which make you unique – we love you for you but sometimes a strong edit can really make an image pop and make people take notice!
I hope that you will find these top tips really useful when making your selections as this can be a daunting prospect!
- The first thing to say is that no one really likes looking at their own face too much – even less so when it’s 50 pictures of your face – take regular breaks. You will find the whole task of choosing your acting headshots or business headshots much easier if you switch off for a few minutes every now and then; make a cuppa, take a walk – just take your eyes off the screen otherwise you will start focussing on one tiny thing that isn’t really that important.
- Which leads me to my next point. You may notice that one freckle on your chin, or that faded chickenpox scar and really focus on it far too much but I promise no one else is looking at it! We see our flaws standing out before anything else but on the whole when people meet us they are concentrating on our eyes, our smile, do we seem warm and friendly and engaging? It is the same with a photograph – you want to engage with the person looking at it and the way humans work is set in nature, the same way primates judge who is a threat and who is friendly. We subconsciously focus on what connects us way before what sets us apart – this works massively in your favour. Do not focus on your flaws.
- A great example of this is the FedEx logo
Now, how many of you have ever noticed the arrow between the E and the X? Most people haven’t, but once you are aware of it that’s all you can see. It’s the exact same with our faces, we obsess over details no one else will ever notice
- When you are making your selections it is very important to remind yourself of the intended purpose of the shots. You may really love all the ones where you have a beaming smile but if your corporate headshots are supposed to represent your serious business side you might not want to choose all of these, equally, if you want to appear approachable, look for warmth in your eyes. Try to pick photos which convey different messages or emotions for your final selection so that you can use them for different purposes. Acting headshots should be varied enough to convey different sides of your casting.
- Still can’t decide? Why not take a straw poll of your colleagues and mates? Be warned though – your mum may not be the most objective helper of them all – she loves them all and you always look gorgeous to her so maybe give that a miss.
Hopefully this will help you narrow down your selections but don’t forget, if you have a headshot session with me I will always provide my choices for you based on our time together and how you explained your needs to me. I am impartial and only know you from our time together so I don’t have preconceived ideas of your personality. I also know images and can draw on my wealth of experience to recommend the strongest images which will represent you and your most engaging self.
Once you select your favourites I get straight to giving them the full edit. All editing is done by me in-house because I know exactly what I want from my images.
Good luck choosing!