What Makes a Great Headshot

Jan 31

What the untrained eye doesn’t see when looking at a headshot

The untrained eye does not look beyond how beautiful or how handsome the subject looks in a headshot. If you have a trained eye, you look at other elements in the image. Today, I am going to give you some pointers so you too can learn how to have a trained eye and view your headshot differently.

Skin Tone

This is on top of my list and so important in my images of different ethnicities. The skin tone has to be right. The first thing that jumps out at me when I look at a headshot is the skin tone no matter the color of the subject. Unfortunately, not all photographers are able to get the skin tone right, don’t know how to edit or do not want to put the work in that is required to obtain an even skin tone and will market their headshots as little to no editing - natural or not requiring editing to cover the fact that they cannot edit or don’t want to put in the time to correct skin tone when they could be out shooting more sessions. Photos by Anette does not soften nor smoothen the skin to correct skin tone. Skin color varies between people and not just by ethnic origin but also by individual so you can imagine why not all photographers are able to get the skin tone right or want to spend the time to correct skin tone. To get a better understanding of how much skin color varies from one person to another, have a look at Brazilian, Angelica Dass’s project, Humane and A Color Wheel of Humanity.

What to look for in the skin tone when viewing a headshot: to put it simply, look to see if the subject has varying skin color and if the skin color is patchy.

Composition

You want to ask yourself; does the subject’s skin tone in the image look like that in real life? Does the image draw you in? And this has nothing to do with being beautiful or handsome but everything to do with drawing the viewer’s attention to the most important parts of the scene in the image. When a Casting Director, an employer or whomever the headshot is intended for views your headshot you want your image to draw him/her in and select your headshot out of hundreds or thousands.

Color Spill or Color Cast

Occurs when the color reflects off the background or backdrop and casts a noticeably tint typically blue, green or purple on the subject. Certain areas of the subject absorbs or reflects that color, usually on the back of the shoulders, side of the arms or legs, and through the hair.

Overexposure

Technically speaking, an over bright image. Typically the background and areas of the subject are overexposed; too bright for what ought to be for the scene (background), or the subject has become too white (bright, too much light). Remember, we are concerned with a headshot image. An overexposed image can be used intentionally for a creative look.

In Focus

A headshot needs to be sharp (in focus) at full size and, in particular, the eyes. View the image at full size and exam if the image is blurred or out of focus.