An Actors’ Guide to Prepare for Taking Headshots That Will Get You Hired
Agents, casting directors, directors, and producers will mainly ask you to audition based on your photos. An agent may send one photo of you to a casting director that looks like the role they are sending you out for. The casting director is then looking at hundreds and thousands of images like yours. They don’t have time to imagine you differently. So what they see is what they’ll hire you for. If you have a great base-range of looks, you will be sent out for more roles.
Here is a minimum suggestion of looks/expressions to go for:
- Smiling
- Resting face
- Formal
- Sexy / Edgy / Dangerous
- Occupational / Blue Collar
- Casual / Fun / Filled with Your Personality
Looking at the Instagrams of professional photographers will help you identify exactly what you want to go for with each expression. Here are a few that focus on headshots:
Mark Mann https://www.instagram.com/markmannphoto/
Michael Schwartz https://www.instagram.com/MSCHWARTZPHOTO/
John Russo https://www.instagram.com/johnrussophoto/
If you are not a professional model, find photos of people in the six poses/expressions you want to replicate. Bring them to the shoot and this will help both you and the photographer communicate about what you are looking for. It will also inspire you to be more creative in the expressions you are using as we tend to be stuck in our own patterns of expressions.
Some quality parameters to ask the photographer to fulfill:
- Make sure there’s always an eye light.
- Make sure most of the photos give you headroom (don’t cut off your hair). This will help you use the photos for multiple purposes.
- Use different backgrounds for each look.
- Use different lighting for each look — ideally, the lighting goes conceptually with the look you aim to create.
Here’s a helpful Backstage article that I like to pass along to clients getting their headshots done for the first time:
https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/headshots-everything-need-know-5052/