Why hire a professional photographer for your company headshots?

What difference does it make hiring a professional to do a job?

In most walks of life you want to get the right person to do the right job and the same is very much true when you need photos for your business.

I was talking to a client yesterday about the importance of good portrait photography skills, and the difference they make.

Now these aren’t any technical skills, although a good photographer will need and have those as well, they are the ‘people skills’ that you pick up with years of experience (in my case over 15 years of shooting for businesses). The skills to relax people you’ve just met and who are already very nervous about being in front of the camera and having their photo taken.

I’ll usually only get a few minutes with people to take their head shot / profile photo, so it’s really important to relax people as soon as possible and give them the confidence that they will look good in the photos. These photo’s sometimes last 10 years on websites and LinkedIn profile shots, so hiring a professional is well worth it.

I always shoot to flatter people and want them to look their best, confident and assured in business profile head shots, so I thought it would be an interesting exercise to take a few photos from a recent job for a large company and show the first photo I took of a few people, next to the final image on the right, for people to see that with experience, a few tweaks of someone’s natural pose and making people feel relaxed you can take a natural head shot of someone.

So what difference does it make hiring a professional to do a job? It makes all the difference!