“You’re a business owner, what’s up with the selfies on your website?”
Your headshot is THEE way to express yourself in a professional manner to your potential customers and clients, but are you financially able to hire a professional to snap your photos?
There are plenty of folks that will discover your social media profiles and/or website before they ever meet you face-to-face. While your online properties can function your unofficial employee, you can’t hide behind your computer forever. A perk of being an entrepreneur is the ability to connect directly with your audience. This means that your photos (at a minimum, your headshot) need to be on point. Take advantage of those opportunities to show a bit of your personality and what makes you unique.
The way your budget is set up as a bootstrapper, hiring a professional photographer might not be in the cards…so here’s what you’ll need to take your own professional looking headshots:
I chose the area in my house with the most windows and faced the backdrop toward the natural light because I didn’t want to use an artificial light source.
My camera that is set up on a tripod about 5 feet away from my backdrop with a mirror behind it so I could see myself in position from the camera viewfinder. What’s not completely shown in the first photo is a chair off to the side of the backdrop, that’s where I put the shutter remote after I activated the camera to take the photo.
[Tweet “First impressions count. If you can’t afford a photograher right now, learn how to DIY your headshot.”]
My camera is set on a 10-second delay so I had time to pose before the photo was captured. Check out the unedited photos below:
As you can see, nothing too fancy, but it was important that my personality come through in these photos; I was looking to present business-fashiony-quirky….I’m happy with how these came out.
I’m working on a Part 2 of this post where I’ll share the tools that I used to edit and what I did with my photos. In the meantime, get your headshots updated! If you don’t have a camera you can use your smartphone, just make sure that it doesn’t look like a selfie. Keep in mind what your potential clients and customers are looking for when choosing whom to follow and spend money with.
About my equipment – with the exception of my dining room area you can find everything that I used online. For your convenience I’ve listed each item below with links.
Stuff I used:
LimoStudio Photography Light Studio (I didn’t use the lights)
Remember all those people saying that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover? Well people do that all the time, which is why your headshot matters. If you want to be treated as a professional, business-y type person, your headshot has to look the part.
We’ve officially removed your budget limitations as an obstacle…so you can go be Great!
