"I've already got a headshot, so I'm sorted."
I hear that a lot, and a good headshot is well worth having. It's the first thing people see on LinkedIn, on your website, in a speaker bio or on a team page.
Think of a good headshot as a handshake. It makes a strong first impression and shows you look the part. But a handshake isn't the whole conversation. What it can't do on its own is show someone what you're like to work with.
That gap is what I want to talk about.
What a headshot does well
A headshot answers the first questions. Is this a real, professional person I can take seriously? Are they someone who looks approachable and trustworthy?
It lays the right foundation. Someone sees a professional who has taken the effort to look great. They decide you're worth a closer look.
So I'm not going to tell you headshots don't matter. They do. A lot!
I photograph them all week. I've seen how a great headshot lifts a profile. How it can stop the scroll and deliver that first positive handshake. It also empowers and lifts your self-esteem.
A great headshot does its job. The gap only shows when it's the only photo you have.
What a single photo can't show
Think about how someone actually decides to work with you. That headshot opens the door and gets the conversation started.
Then they choose you because they've got a sense of how you operate. How you help them, and seeing is believing.
What a branding shoot adds
This is where I spend most of my time with personal branding clients. Before the shoot I look at who you are, who you're trying to reach, and the stories you tell about your work. Then we build the photos around those stories rather than around generic poses.
Mostly that means catching you in action. You talking a client through something, mid-pitch, thinking out loud at a whiteboard, or on stage giving a talk. Those images show your expertise instead of announcing it, and they usually include the smaller in-between moments too, the ones that make you look approachable rather than staged.
It also means photographing you where you actually work. Your office, a meeting room, wherever the day really happens. A plain background tells people nothing about you, and the real setting gives them the context to imagine being in the room with you.
The aim isn't more photos for their own sake. It's giving someone enough to place you in their world before they've said a word to you.
You don't need a hundred images
A worry I hear next is that this all sounds like a big, awkward production. It isn't.
The images earn their keep twice over. Once you have a set, you've got months of posts, profile updates and website pictures without scrambling for something to put up.
And the session itself works the way my headshot sessions do. I come to you, I coach you through it if you don't much enjoy being photographed, and your edited images follow within a few working days.
Where to start
A headshot is the handshake that opens the door. A proper set of personal branding photos is the conversation that happens once you're through it.
If your headshot is already doing its job, building on it is usually the next thing worth sorting. My Professional Story package is built for exactly this, and there's a fuller Complete Visual Identity option if you'd rather do the lot in one go.
Have a look and tell me a bit about what you do. I'll point you to whatever would actually be useful, headshot or not.
