How To Make A Great Headshot

A headshot is a tightly framed portrait whose only job is to make the subject look like themselves on their best day. It is not a fashion editorial, it is not an environmental portrait, it is not art. It is utility. A good headshot fits on a profile page, on a name badge, on a book jacket, on a website “About” page, and on a casting agent’s screen. It reads instantly, it flatters without lying, and it makes the viewer feel that the person in the picture would be reasonable to deal with. Sounds easy. It is not. The constraints (tight crop, plain background, neutral expression range) leave very little to hide behind, which is exactly why technique matters here more than in most other portrait situations.

What a headshot is actually for

The audience for a headshot is a stranger making a quick decision: hire this person, swipe past this person, take this person seriously, trust this person. A good headshot answers four questions in under a second. Is this a real human? Do they look approachable? Do they look competent? Do they look like the version of themselves they would want a stranger to see?

That is a different bar than “the subject looks beautiful.” Models can be unapproachable. Politicians can be untrustworthy-looking. Brilliant engineers can be impossible to read. A headshot is a working photograph that has to do a specific job for a specific audience. Different jobs need different headshots: a corporate executive on a finance website needs to look serious and reliable; a children’s book illustrator needs to look warm; an actor needs to look like someone a casting director can see in three different roles. The technical craft is the same. The directing changes.

Framing and crop

The standard headshot crop is from the top of the head (or just clipping the hair at the top edge) down to roughly the chest or the top of the shoulders. There is room for variation. A LinkedIn-style corporate headshot tends to include more of the shoulders, suggesting clothing and posture. An actor’s headshot is usually tighter, often head-and-collarbone, because the face is the entire product. A medical professional’s headshot often includes more shoulder so the scrubs or white coat read.

Three composition rules that almost always help:

• The eyes should sit on the upper third of the frame, not in the middle. Eyes in the geometric center makes a portrait feel oddly bottom-heavy.
• Leave a small amount of headroom above the hair, or crop confidently into the hair. Cropping right at the top of the head looks accidental.
• Square or roughly 4:5 vertical aspect ratios are usually better for headshots than 3:2, because they direct attention to the face rather than to the empty sides of the frame.

Shoot a little wider than the final crop. You can crop in during editing. You cannot crop out.

Lens choice and distance

Focal length matters more for headshots than for almost any other portrait, because the lens controls how a face is perspectively rendered. Short focal lengths (wide angle, anything below about 50mm on full frame) shot at headshot distance exaggerate the nose, narrow the ears, and produce a slightly cartoonish caricature of the face. Long focal lengths (85mm to 135mm on full frame, or roughly 56mm to 90mm on a crop sensor) compress the face into a flatter, more flattering rendering. The cliché “portrait lens” is in that 85mm range for a reason.

Distance from subject matters even more than the lens. A wide lens close to the face still distorts. A long lens close to the face still flatters. As a rule, stay at least four to six feet from the subject and choose the focal length that frames them correctly at that distance. If you back up further with an even longer lens, the perspective gets even smoother and the background blur increases, both of which are usually flattering.

The subject’s eyes should be at the same height as the lens or very slightly above it. Shooting up at someone produces an unflattering view of the underside of the chin and nose. Shooting down on someone exaggerates the forehead and shrinks the jaw. Lens at eye level is the default that almost always works.

Lighting for headshots

Big and soft is the standard. The classic studio headshot uses one large diffused light source as the key (a large softbox, an open window, a wall bounce), often slightly above the subject and angled across the face. A second softer source or a reflector fills the shadow side so the face does not get muddy.

You do not need a studio. The single most underrated headshot setup is a north-facing window (in the northern hemisphere) on an overcast day, with the subject standing three to four feet inside and turned forty-five degrees toward the window. A white wall opposite the window acts as a reflector and fills the shadow side. That setup produces beautiful, even, flattering light for free. Many of the headshots you see on the back of book jackets are made exactly this way.

Some lighting traps to avoid:

• Overhead light, especially harsh midday sun directly above. Creates raccoon eye shadows.
• Hard light from a small bare lamp or undiffused flash, which exaggerates skin texture.
• Mixed color temperature (a window plus a tungsten lamp), which gives one side of the face a different color than the other.
• A single light far to the side with no fill, producing half-bright, half-shadow faces that look dramatic rather than approachable.
• Backlight without front fill, producing a silhouette where a face should be.
• Bright background with no rim light, which can look like the subject is glowing oddly.

Background

Plain and unobtrusive. A clean wall (white, gray, off-white, a soft neutral color), a backdrop, or an out-of-focus environment. The background should not compete with the subject. It should not have lines emerging from behind their head (a horizon, a doorframe edge, a tree branch) that visually slice through them.

If you are working in an environment rather than a studio, use a wide aperture (f/2.8 to f/4 for headshots on full frame) and put distance between the subject and the background so the background falls out of focus. Depth of field at headshot distance is shallow, so background separation is easy to achieve, but be careful: at f/1.4 you can put one eye in focus and the other slightly soft, which usually looks like a mistake. f/4 to f/5.6 is the safer working range for getting both eyes critically sharp.

Background color should support skin tone, not fight it. Warm skin tones generally do well against cool gray or muted blue. Cool skin tones do well against warm tan or putty. Avoid pure white if you do not have great control of background lighting (it will gray out or you will have to push the file to clip). Avoid pure black for corporate work (it reads as moody rather than reliable).

Posing the body and face

Bodies look better when slightly angled to the camera, not perfectly square. A forty-five degree body angle with the face turned back toward the camera reads as natural and slimming. Perfectly square shoulders read as confrontational or stiff.

The chin should come forward and slightly down. Pulling the chin toward the camera and tipping it a small amount downward defines the jawline and removes the appearance of a double chin even on subjects who do not have one. This is the single most useful direction you will ever give a subject. Practice it on yourself in a mirror until you know what it should look like.

The eyes do the work. A face with relaxed eyes reads as warm. A face with slightly squinted eyes (sometimes called “smize”) reads as confident. A face with wide-open, surprised-looking eyes reads as anxious. Asking a subject to take a small inhale and slowly exhale just before the shutter often produces a more relaxed expression than asking them to smile.

Smiles are tricky. A full open-mouth smile rarely works for a corporate headshot but is great for hospitality or service businesses. A closed-mouth smile with engaged eyes is the safest default. The “no smile” look is increasingly popular for editorial and creative roles but reads as cold to general audiences. Shoot a range: the subject will look like a different person in each, and they can choose.

Camera settings

• Mode: Aperture priority or full manual.
• Aperture: f/4 to f/8 for safety with both eyes sharp. f/2.8 if you have nailed focus and want background blur.
• Shutter speed: 1/200 or faster handheld for stable shots. Faster if your subject is fidgety.
• ISO: Whatever produces a clean file in your available light. 100 to 800 in good light, higher when necessary.
• Focus mode: Single-point or eye-detect autofocus. Always focus on the nearer eye.
• Metering: Spot or center-weighted on the face, never matrix on a backlit subject.
• White balance: Custom or a preset that matches your light source. Auto white balance can shift frame to frame on a series.
• File format: RAW, always. Headshots are retouched and you need the data.

Wardrobe and grooming, briefly

Solid colors photograph better than busy patterns. Necklines that crowd the chin (high collars, ruffles) shrink the face. Open, simple necklines (a plain shirt, a V-neck, a blazer over a plain top) frame the face cleanly. Bright logos and very busy patterns pull attention away from the subject.

Have a tissue and a small bottle of water within reach for the session. Faces dry out and oil up under lights. Stray hairs across the forehead can be fixed in two seconds by you or the subject and save five minutes of retouching later. If your subject wears glasses, expect reflections; tilt the glasses slightly down at the front so reflections kick below the lens, or do a frame or two without the glasses if it suits the use case.

Directing the subject

Most people are uncomfortable in front of a camera, especially up close. The single biggest determinant of headshot quality is whether the subject relaxes. Talk to them. Tell them what you are doing and why. Show them an early frame on the back of the camera if they want to see one. Give them concrete physical directions (chin forward and slightly down, weight on the back foot, hands relaxed by your sides) rather than vague emotional ones (“be confident”). Count down to the shutter so they are not bracing for an unknown moment.

Shoot more frames than you think you need. People relax over the first few minutes. The best frame is rarely the first one. Plan for at least twenty minutes of actual shutter time even if you think you only need three frames, because the subject needs warmup time.

Common headshot mistakes

• Lens too wide, exaggerating the nose and making the face look unbalanced.
• Light from above the subject creating raccoon eyes.
• Background too close to the subject, so it stays sharp and competes for attention.
• One eye in focus, one eye slightly soft, because the aperture was too wide.
• Shutter speed too slow, producing motion blur on a subject who blinked.
• Subject looking past the lens (at the screen on the back of the camera, or at the photographer’s eyes) instead of into it. Eye contact through the lens is what reads as eye contact to the viewer.
• Crop into the top of the head landing exactly at the hairline, which looks accidental.
• Posing with shoulders perfectly square, producing a stiff and slightly defensive look.
• Asking for “a big smile” and getting a forced, eyes-don’t-match smile. A real smile starts in the eyes a fraction before the mouth moves.
• Overprocessing in retouch: smoothed skin that loses pore detail, eyes brightened to unnatural whites. Reads as fake and untrustworthy.

Try this: a 10-minute headshot exercise

Set up next to a window on an overcast day or at any time when the window is not in direct sun. Place a friend or family member three feet inside the window, body angled forty-five degrees toward the light, face turned back toward you. Place a white piece of foam board or a white sheet on the opposite side as a reflector. Stand four to six feet from the subject with a lens in the eighty-five-ish millimeter equivalent range, eye-detect autofocus on, aperture priority at f/5.6, base ISO. Have the subject lift their chin and bring it slightly forward. Shoot ten frames. Between frames, give one physical direction (turn the body two degrees, lower the chin a hair, look at a specific point past my left shoulder). Stop. Pick the best frame and notice which physical direction made it. You now know what working a real headshot session feels like.

Frequently asked questions

A headshot is the most utilitarian portrait in working photography, which is what makes it so unforgiving. Everything has to be right at once: focal length, lighting, posture, expression, background, focus. None of these are hard individually. Putting them together in a twenty-minute session with a nervous subject is the actual craft. For the related techniques, see portrait photography, portrait lighting, environmental portrait, headshot photography, depth of field, focal length, and the rest of the glossary.