What a professional headshot actually has to do
5 min A headshot has three jobs: be recognisably you, match the room you are walking into, and survive being shrunk to 48 pixels. Everything else is decoration.
Profile photos, plainly explained.
Short, practical pieces on profile photos: what a headshot has to do, how to shoot one worth processing, and where your face goes when you upload it. Every claim is tested on our own photos.
How to shoot a headshot with the phone you already have
4 min Ten minutes, a window and a phone. The two things you cannot fix afterwards are focus and light, so this is mostly about getting those right and ignoring the rest.
What happens to your face when you upload it to a headshot generator
4 min Uploading a photo of your face starts four separate clocks: transit, retention, training use and whether anyone derived a face template from it. Here is what to ask, and how to check the alternative yourself.
Headshot lighting with one window and nothing bought
5 min A window on an overcast day is a large, soft, free light source. Here is where to stand relative to it, and the two ways people get it wrong.
Phone camera settings that matter for a headshot
5 min Four settings decide almost everything, and they are the same on iPhone and Android. Everything else in the camera app is noise for this particular job.
Why your LinkedIn photo looks blurry
4 min Almost always one of four things, and only one of them is about the original photo being soft. The other three you can fix in a couple of minutes.
Square, 4:5 or 3:4: which crop for which platform
4 min Most places show you a circle or a square. A few want a portrait rectangle. Shoot once with room around you and you can produce all of them from the same frame.
Headshot background colours, and what each one says
5 min Grey, white, blue, black or the room you are standing in. The choice is mostly about how much separation you need and how formal the destination is.
Headshots in glasses: reflections, frames and when to take them off
4 min If you wear glasses every day, keep them on. The photo has to look like you. Reflections are the real problem and they are solved by moving, not by editing.
How to change the background of a headshot
5 min Cutting yourself out is the easy half. Making the result look photographed rather than pasted is the half that gets skipped, and it comes down to two small additions.