Let’s face it — there’s nothing worse than a bland, soulless headshot. For a headshot to be successful, it should be memorable. And to be memorable, it needs to be filled with personality. At Morton Visuals, we believe that every single headshot should show a little of the subject’s personality. Here is a little inside look at how we infuse personality in professional headshots.
Personality in Professional Headshots: Tips and Tricks
Movement is Dynamic
Instead of having you sit in a frozen, unnatural position, we try to allow for some natural movement. This will help you to relax a bit and be yourself. Soon enough, some of your personality should trickle back into the photos. We usually have you standing, and may ask you to walk, turn, or even move your head. (Count on that last one!)
Read the Body Language
Body language is always a good indicator of how comfortable someone feels. However, if someone gets really comfortable, they’ll probably be slouching. So our directions may feel a bit unnatural, but trust us — it will look much better.
Make You Laugh
The camera picks up emotion better than most people. In order to make your photos look genuine, we try to make sure that the emotion is also genuine. Simply asking you to smile won’t do the trick. Instead we’ll entertain you with jokes from only the smartest first-graders!
Highlight You in Your Environment
Nothing kills personality like a boring blue backdrop. While you may prefer this style for your team’s headshots, consider taking the headshots in a more natural location. We can bring a mobile photo studio to your location, complete with studio lighting and backdrops. But you can even set up the photos within the context of the office to create a scene that is true to life, and better establish your team and what they do.
Want to Nail Personality in Professional Headshots? Discover Morton Visuals
Ready to take some headshots of your team that are bursting with memorable personality? Find out more about how Morton Visuals can help.
What makes a perfect headshot? As far as we’re concerned, great headshots don’t need to be hard. In fact, the recipe for a great shot is pretty simple. Here are three elements that every good headshot should have.
If you’re considering getting some new corporate headshots for your company, you may be wondering — what makes a perfect headshot? As far as we’re concerned, great headshots don’t need to be hard. In fact, the recipe for a great shot is pretty simple. Here are three elements that every good headshot should have.
Rules for the Perfect Headshot
Personality
Every great headshot should have buckets of personality. The image should show off the person’s unique qualities. By looking at the image, you should get a sense of who the person really is. Do their eyes reveal a laughing, friendly personality? Or does their expression give a hint of their determined, alpha qualities?
Uniqueness
A good headshot should be unique. Try not to follow a cookie-cutter formula with your subject standing in front of a background smiling at the camera. Think of clever ways you can keep the image clear and professional, while making it unlike other headshots. The last thing you want is for the picture to be forgettable.
Quality
Finally, every good headshot really has to be taken professionally. No matter how great you think your holiday photos are, you’re probably not equipped to take a headshot of a high standard. A professional photographer can help you to take a super high quality photo that will speak for itself and give your business added credibility.
Get the Perfect Headshot Today
Here at Morton Visuals, we specialize in taking extremely high quality corporate headshots that will help your clients to see you at your best. Our unique action shots show off your team doing what they do best. Find out whether Morton Visuals can help you get the headshots of your dreams by contacting us today. Or, take a look at our portfolio to get a better idea of what we can offer.
Brand consistency is a crucial thing to consider for any business. Providing a consistent tone and image for your company helps your clients to place you and remember you. Plus, it makes you look professional and reliable — key for any company!
Brand consistency is a crucial thing to consider for any business. Providing a consistent tone and image for your company helps your clients to place you and remember you. Plus, it makes you look professional and reliable — key for any company!
Corporate headshots are a great way to improve your brand image and credibility. However, when they’re done wrong, they can easily mess up your carefully designed brand image. Here are some tips on ensuring your corporate headshots work with you rather than against you.
Set a Color Scheme
First thing’s fist, decide on how you want your images to look. Think about the tone of your brand and try to convey that in the images. Setting a color scheme can be a great way to keep things professional while alluding to your brand’s image. Go for colors that match your logo or brand design for a super sleek and professional look.
Business headshots of the entire team with a modern look
Business headshots of the staff with a traditional look
Chat With Your Photographer About Brand Consistency
A good headshot photographer will know how to keep your brand looking good. If you’re worried about maintaining a consistent image with the rest of your content, speak to your photographer about how you can take photos that are in line with your company’s brand. For some companies a ultra modern, corporate look with studio lighting will work best. For others, a laid-back, outdoors-y look is better suited. Either way, your photographer will be ready to work smoothly and efficiently to minimize the time impact on your team and still make everyone look their very best.
Chat With Your Team
Make sure that everyone on your team is ready to arrive to the headshot session “in character.” Set a general dress code and ask your employees to think about how they as individuals can support the brand in their photos.
Let Morton Visuals Help You Deliver Brand Consistency in Your Headshots.
Find out whether Morton Visuals is right for you. We take care to cater to your company’s needs so that you can have the best possible headshots for your team. Contact us to find out more!
Thinking about taking some corporate headshots of all of your employees? While you’ve probably considered the style and look you want for your photos, you may have forgotten to think about the importance of timing. Find out how taking all of your headshots of the same day can actually make a huge difference!
Looking for corporate headshot tips? If your business is planning on taking a set of corporate headshots, you may be a little surprised by how many factors there are to consider. From outfits, to backdrops, to photographers, every decision will impact the way your team looks. Ultimately, this have a knock on effect for prospective clients who see the photos.
One of the most important (and most overlooked) corporate headshot tips is to ensure that your entire team is photographed on the same day. While this may sound like a bizarre tip, it will mean that your collection of headshots has a unified look. Plus, this will make a huge difference in the quality of your final shots!
Pro Corporate Headshot Tip: A Unified Look Creates an Instant Air of Professionalism
If you want your business to come across as trustworthy and well-established, remember that your headshot gallery matters. When prospective customers look at your employee photos, they will make instant judgements based on the quality of their photos. A high quality photo suggests a high quality professional — and a high quality gallery of photos suggests a high quality team. By unifying all headshots in the same style, you’ll instantly make your team look like a professional, reliable unit.
One or Two Low Quality or Old Shots Will Instantly Reduce the Quality of All Headshots
If you’ve scheduled a photoshoot for corporate headshots of your team, make sure everyone is available. If even one employee is unavailable, you may end up with a series of photos that don’t match. Even if you hire the same photographer for another day, each session can have a slightly different look and feel. Remember, if one or two photos don’t match the others, you’ll actually lose the entire effect of the rest of the photos. In fact, the professional headshots will actually look less professional when placed amongst a few low quality shots!
One of the most important parts of running a successful business is finding new leads in order to grow your business. Whether you sell to customers to other businesses, generating good leads is crucial for business growth. If you’ve been struggling to convert your leads into actual sales, you may need to make some changes to your business. Using professional headshots for business leads is an excellent way to instantly improve your growth rate. Here are three reasons why.
Professional Headshots Build Brand Trust
If you want people to buy into your brand, you need to make sure they trust you. Brands that come across as reliable and professional are far more likely to draw in new customers. It has been shown that professional branding and imagery:
makes an impression
makes you memorable
builds trust
Trust is crucial, as it means customers and clients won’t only choose you once, they’ll choose you again and again.
“Fake It Till You Make It”
If you are a fairly new business, you may think that it’s best to wait till you’ve grown a little to focus on brand image. However, the reverse is actually true. The best way to grow your business quickly is to adopt a ‘fake it till you make it’ attitude. This means creating an ultra professional look for your business, including branding and headshots.
People Trust Individuals More Than Corporations
It has been shown that most customers are more likely to put their trust in individuals rather than in a faceless brand. By putting a face to the name for each of your company’s main players, you’ll help customers feel connected to the people behind the business, which will in turn, help them to trust your business as a whole.
Discover the professional photography at Morton Visuals that will put your business a step above its competitors.
Commercial Portrait Photography is essential. There is no doubt about it. Corporate headshots are amazing tools that are used to represent who you are, not what you do. If you establish a reputable business portrait, you can instill the values of quality with your potential customers.
Corporate Headshots
Professional corporate headshot
You have numerous studios to choose from. You can set up a mini studio yourself and make a professional portrait in no time, but if you want the very best results you should plan on hiring a professional headshot photographer.
For corporate headshots, you need to make sure that you’re using proper equipment, adequate lighting, with appropriate lenses. And you’ll want to ensure that the images match your company’s brand and style.
Corporate Meeting and Event Photos
Holiday party portrait
Corporate meetings and events can make for some good photos that paint a fun, dynamic, and strict picture of your company. It is important to photograph these events accurately. An event management company needs to be very proficient and smart about how they handle photos of these events.
Planning corporate meetings has never been a simple task but planning it the right way could lead not only to some fantastic portrait photography but to some improved business practices.
Corporate Offices
Almost all your corporate portrait photography needs are going to be taken care of in your offices. You need to know how to make the office a fantastic photography place. To make sure that you always have a proper photo option, you can utilize the services of a mobile studio. Either hire someone to do it or do it yourself.
Bringing professional lighting, tripods, lenses, and cameras is a great way to turn any place into a quick and efficient photo studio. The only thing left to do is posing, and that is best done on the spot.
Corporate Parties, Outings, and Retreats
Event photography is about people.
If you’re working hard or hardly working, it’s crucial to capture the experience of all corporate parties, outings, and retreats. These are not only good team-building opportunities but also prove themselves to give great photo options.
Photographing your parties and outings is integral to painting a picture of your business as a fun, modern, and progressive one. Numerous different firms offer their outing and party service to companies, such as this one.
Commercial photography
Commercial photography includes, amongst several other specialties, the following:
Food Photography
There are numerous different ways you can improve your food photography game. Soliciting the services of a food stylist, a professional photographer, and a prop specialist is a great place to start.
Food photography can make use of models to demonstrate the qualities of the food product. Finding a model for your food photography is as simple as contacting your local modeling agency.
Product Photography
The only way you can paint an accurate picture of your product on your e-commerce website is by giving it a good photo. A good photo paints a picture of reliability, trustworthiness, and quality. The product is mostly judged by the way it looks. You can’t touch or feel the product through the internet, so manipulating the visuals is a fantastic way to present it.
However, stores can have numerous products, and photographing them can prove to be very expensive. DIY-ing this method is far simpler and cheaper and takes only a fraction of the cost.
Interior Photography
Interior Photography is a science, and takes a lot of time to create. Time of day can be critical in many locations, adding (or minimizing) daylight as appropriate. That nice sunset shot of a building can only be taken at one time of day, and all other images must be scheduled before or after that key shot. Some spaces may need morning light or late afternoon light, depending on elements such as windows and what side of a building a space may be on. It’s important to allow for these variables.
Industrial Photography
Industrial photography, while not glamorous, is very important, fun, and challenges. Taking good industrial photos can be a challenge. Inspiration is key, and you need some excellent industrial photo subjects to make a good photo.
Safety is the number one priority when it comes to this type of photography!
Some common subjects in industrial photography are:
Welders working
Processing plants
Shipyard and factory workers
Gas terminals
Nuclear reactors
Machinery
Assembly lines
Brochures and Catalogue Photography
Brochures and catalogs are not that challenging to photograph but are essential to document. Marketing tools are very important, though! You need to keep a couple of things in mind when doing so to best showcase your skills and paint the picture of the catalog and brochure in a fun and friendly manner.
Benefits of Commercial Photography
Corporate and commercial portrait photography together gives a better visual presentation for the visitors.
Enhances your corporate image
They improve your corporate image, and these days, image is everything! Be it on your website or any marketing collaterals, good corporate image speaks more than words.
Be Active on Social Media
A fantastic way to enhance your corporate image is by utilizing the services of social media. Look at what Wendy’s has done with a single twitter account. With their new laid back and modern perspective on social media, they have documented the growth of 10% in a couple of months.
You need to get into this. Create an engaging conversation about your service or products, be active in your community, and you’re going to be a social media professional in no time.
Increases your brand awareness
Raising your brand awareness is integral to creating a long-lasting impression on your potential customers. Awareness is everything, and you should work to improve it in any way you can. Commercial photography is a fantastic tool that works for this like a charm. There are numerous ways to do this, such as this one.
Improves your brand eminence
Consider hiring a professional to photograph your team at events to enhance your brand eminence. You can post these pictures on your official website for better promotion.
Increases Sales & ROI
Innovative photographs drive consumers to your product or service, thus increasing ROI and sales. Sales and ROI are significant and should be improved in any aspect available.
Conclusion
While pictures and good commercial photographs might sound expensive, you can’t afford to have shoddy ones. Another important facet to highlight here is the photo editing which can add life to your images. Hire a professional photographer to improve your photos, and you will reap the innumerable benefits of excellent commercial photography, and get your business on the next level, while also gaining an edge on the competition.
William Morton photographs investment executives in downtown San Diego
Shooting professionally since 1991, William Morton has specialized in commercial and corporate photography for the last 9 years. Based in north Dallas, Morton Visuals offers professional business headshots in our studio or in the convenience of your own offices.
We want to ensure that you look your very best for your headshot session. To that end, we consulted with professional Makeup Artist Mary Erickson. Since Mary is a 30-year veteran in the world of commercial print and advertising, she has a lot of experience in this field. Recently retired, she now focuses on her highly successful professional makeup store. She lists her recommended tips below. (The photographer’s comments are added in italics.)
Headshots Preparation
Bring shirts with a collar as well as different necklines.
Women should bring at least 6 different tops to choose from. Men should bring several (3-4) different shirts, clean and ironed.
No sleeveless shirts for headshots.
No solid white (unless you’re covering it with a jacket or sports coat). If you’re very light-skinned you may want to avoid solid black.
Solid colors are ideal; stay away from busy patterns and busy prints.
Bring a lint brush or lint roller, since fuzz will show on dark colors.
Make sure your clothes are pressed and clean. Very few photographers have irons or extra time. Photo retouching on soiled or wrinkled clothes will usually cost extra. Bring your wardrobe to the shoot on hangers if possible.
Stay away from clothes with big buttons or ornaments that shine and compete for attention.
If you wear earrings they should be small. Keep jewelry at a minimum, because anything flashy will distract from you.
Men should be clean-shaven, and a recent haircut is recommended.
Whether your headshots are for your social media presence or your professional resume, present your very best image to your prospective clients or employers.
If you have any questions, please feel free to comment below.
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Preparing yourself for an important photo shoot can be a daunting task. Many models or actors try to crash diet before the shoot, spray tan, or try any number of other “quickie” fixes at the last minute. Below are some great suggestions from renowned Makeup Artist Mary Erickson.
Most professional model knows by experience about what needs to be done before a photo shoot. If you do not have a lot of modeling experience I suggest you look over the following list of things that will help you for this shoot and in the future. The more of these guidelines you follow the better your shots will turn out.
72 hours before your photo shoot, avoid the following items (these items can give you oily skin and swelling):
Red meat
Alcohol
Caffeine
Spicy foods
Retin A and Alpha Hydroxy creams (causes skin peeling that will show with photo makeup)
Drink lots of water, carry it with you everywhere you go, and keep sipping.
Exfoliate your skin at least once a week and also the morning of the shoot.
Have your brows professionally shaped and then keep them up by plucking the strays every few days. I will Pluck strays the day of the shoot but may not have time to shape your brows.
It is a good idea to carry your own mascara to the shoot with you. Some make-up artists use mascara with the same wand on several people. This can spread infection very quickly. Unless you know the artist and know that she only uses disposable wands, it’s best not to take your chances. I do use disposable wands!
Dark roots will look even worse in photos. Refresh your hair color a few days before your shoot. If you do not color your hair, try “shades” or a toner just a shade lighter then your hair to make it shine. If you need a trim, do it before the shoot.
Fingernails and toenails should be one length, well manicured, and the polish should be colorless or French, unless this shoot calls for color.
All traces of makeup should be gone from your skin. All eyeliner and mascara should be gone. Your face should be clean and product free when you arrive.
Do not over condition your hair before a shoot. Do use your regular styling products to make your hair behave, as chances are the hair stylist will not be wetting your hair and not be able to use gels, etc. Your hair must be dry before you arrive at the shoot.
Avoid dry lips by putting Vaseline on your lips before bed and the morning of your shoot.
For body (lots of skin showing) shots, be sure you get rid of tan lines by visiting a tanning booth a few times. Also get rid of unsightly body hair.
If you are paying the artist, feel free to give advice on how you want to look. The photos are yours and you will have to live with them. If it is a commercial shoot or a shoot that someone else is paying for its best to keep quiet on makeup and hair. Chances are the artist knows what the photographer and art director want. It may not be what you prefer but normally the person paying for the shoot likes to make ALL the decisions. If you are new at modeling is a good idea to go ahead and let the artist make the decisions, even if you are paying her or him. In most cases they will know what will look better in the photos – they are dealing with lights, backgrounds and lens filters that you probably are not familiar with.
Mary’s website is full of useful information, especially for the aspiring or “up & coming” makeup artists – check out her Q&A page! And if you want to gauge whether or not she knows what she’s talking about, check out her resumé!
Since these questions come up constantly, my favorite makeup artist Mary Erickson put together this handy list of considerations when preparing for your headshots.
Bring shirts with a collar as well as different necklines.
Bring at least 6 different tops to choose from.
No sleeveless shirts for headshots, they can make the arms look big and skin below the face takes the attention away from the face.
No solid white.
Solids usually work best, stay away from patterns and busy prints.
Bring a lint brush or lint roller, fuzz will show on dark colors.
Make sure your clothes are pressed and clean – very few photographers have irons or extra time. Photo retouching on soiled clothes will usually cost extra.
Stay away from clothes with big buttons or ornaments that shine and compete for attention.
If you wear earrings they should be small studs. Keep jewelry at a minimum, because anything flashy will distract from you.
Mary’s website is full of useful information, especially for the aspiring or “up & coming” makeup artists – check out her Q&A page! And if you want to gauge whether or not she knows what she’s talking about, check out her resumé!
William Morton photographs Superior Court judge candidate Jim Miller on the steps of the San Diego Hall of Justice.
Jim Miller Jr.William Morton Visuals photographed attorney Jim Miller Jr. on the steps of the San Diego Hall of Justice today. Miller, a candidate for Superior Court Judge Seat 20, will be using images from the location shoot for his campaign website. To see more, visit www.JimMillerForJudge.com.