Making a lasting impression helps build your online presence. In most cases, the first thing people will see is your face.
The good news is, you don’t have to spend a fortune on professional headshots. You can easily take a professional headshot from your home using your iPhone or other smartphones!
So, what does a professional headshot look like?
First and foremost—edit your photos! Even with the advancements in iPhone’s camera quality, a quick edit can highlight the features that can make your photos stand out.
The best photographers know raw images don’t capture what the human eye does, especially in color and lighting. Uploading a raw headshot might look flat and uninspired. We don’t want that.
Here is an example of a good headshot:
You can even learn how to remove the background images on your images with your iPhone and add your own!
Now that we know what to aim for when taking a headshot, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to take your own.
Before taking your headshots, there are a few things that you need to prepare. This involves your camera settings, your environment, and even yourself.
At the end of this guide, we’ll make sure that you’ll be taking professional headshots with your iPhone!
Unlike most smartphones, your iPhone’s image files are shot in “.HEIC” formats. It’s great for the iPhone as it’s used for live photos, animation sequences, and burst photos.
But if you want the most compatibility, especially for editing software, you’d want your files to be in “JPG”. To do this, go to Settings>Camera>Formats>Most Compatible.
The next thing you need to prepare is yourself. As a prerequisite, you’d want to get a good night’s sleep.
Being well-rested has proven benefits in the way our skin looks, how we feel, and how energized we are. Remember, a good photo starts from within!
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From there, we’d want to look as professional as we can. Find the right clothes, fix up your hair, apply make-up if you want to, and wear accessories that help accentuate your features.
Here’s a quick rundown of best practices for each:
Clothes: You can be as formal as you’d like to be and go for things like suits and a tie. But if you want to go for a more casual look, a buttoned-down shirt will do. If you want something more casual, a nice sweater is a good compromise.
Hair Style: Having long hair helps you try a ton of variations for your headshot. But as a rule of thumb, you want your hair either forward on both sides or have hair over your shoulder on the side near the camera.
Make-up: We recommend going for make-up that you’d typically use for your day-to-day office routine. Never overdo your make-up as editing software can fix up any blemishes you might have.
Lighting is an essential part of any photo shoot. If you’re doing this at home, find an area with “diffused” lighting. Direct sunlight on your face casts shadows and forces you to squint. That’s not a good look on a professional headshot.
Your best bet for DIY lighting for at-home photoshoots is you directly face large windows. The most ideal scenario is if you have blinds or curtains to “diffuse” the direct sunlight.
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If the window doesn’t have curtains, you can back away from the window or wait until the sunlight dims down later in the afternoon.
Tripods are going to make sure the photos you take are consistent and not shaky. Meanwhile, friends will be there to laugh at you while you attempt to keep a straight face for the photo.
But in all seriousness, having a friend to take your photos helps you in two important ways:
In photography, composition is everything. The same applies to your body. Getting a good headshot requires you to compose your body into the right position.
A pro tip is to avoid facing dead center. Instead, position your body slightly angled to the right or left with your head turned. This results in a casual and friendly look. Nothing too serious.
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The next thing to consider is your eye contact. In an interview, you’d want to keep eye contact as it makes you look more confident. The same applies to your headshots.
Look straight at the lens. This helps grab the attention of anybody looking at your profile with your headshot.
After finishing all the prerequisites, all that needs to be done is to take the shot! Make sure to take multiple ones and choose the best of the pack. Afterward, all that’s left to do is to edit the photos.
Editing is the essential last step to a good headshot. A common misconception is that editing is used to alter photos, but that’s not the case. It’s about enhancing it.
It helps focus on important features, colors, lighting, and even the alignment of the photo itself. However, not everybody knows how to use editing software like Lightroom or Photoshop.
Luckily, there are free, simple-to-use photo editor apps for iPhones like Pixelcut!
Pixelcut is an intuitive AI-powered, beginner-friendly editing tool that you can use on the fly! The best part is, Pixelcut is free to download on your iPhone and other devices.
It’s got all the tools you need to make a great headshot! For example, you’d want your profile viewers to focus on you and nothing else. If you’re doing a DIY photoshoot at home, there could be objects in the background that can take away the focus from your headshot.
With Pixelcut, you can use the Magic Eraser tool to remove any unwanted objects in the background. You can even remove the background entirely with the Background Remover tool. Then, you can add your own background layer!
You can also use Pixelcut’s AI-powered Replace Tool to fix blemishes such as Acne. All you have to do is highlight the area you want to fix and enter the right prompts. In this example, we used “clear skin” as the prompt to erase the acne:
A good headshot can lead to better first impressions. To recap, here are important details to keep in mind when trying to get a good headshot with your iPhone:
If you want great headshots at your fingertips, look no further than Pixelcut! Edit your headshots for free and see how PixelCut can help you make quality headshots with your iPhone!
Join more than 10 million small businesses, creators and entrepreneurs that use Pixelcut to grow their business.