You’ve got a photography project coming up– maybe for event coverage, headshots, workplace lifestyle photos, or editorial style portraits of someone in your leadership team– and you’re collecting quotes from vendors. You’ve picked your favorite photographer, and now you’re considering negotiating their price.

If you’re wondering if it’s time to update your LinkedIn photo, the time to update it probably passed months (or years) ago. You already know it’s due for a refresh, so let’s talk about why. We’ll cover what your headshot says about you, how it impacts your visibility, and even how it plays into LinkedIn’s job-search algorithms.

One of the most common things people say before a session is, “I just want to look natural.”
Which sounds simple, right? But how do you look natural when you’re suddenly aware of your hands, your face, your posture, and the fact that someone is pointing a giant camera at you?

Let’s imagine you just shelled out a couple hundred dollars for professional photos and you take one look at them and throw up a bit in the back of your throat. This is everyone’s nightmare scenario and what keeps them from stepping into a photography studio.

(Originally published in Crain’s Chicago Business by the author)

I’ve been a small business owner employing independent contractors (including myself) for 20 years. If I’m sounding alarm bells about a gig economy running amok, please listen.

You need professional headshots. So you start calling around local studios, but you find that a session with one photographer is $1,000 and another is $100. So what’s the difference between the $1,000 shoot and the $100 shoot?

About a year ago my photography studio had a client happily return for a new headshot because she lost 100lbs and wanted to celebrate her new, more socially acceptable body with portraits of it. In the middle of her photo shoot she fainted and landed face-down on the ground.

I started finding gray hairs at 18. Just a few, no biggie, my mom colored her hair for as long as I can remember and my dad sported salt and pepper most of his life too, so I figured I had it coming. Then around 25 I was DIYing root coverage with a concoction from Sally Beauty Supply several times a year. By 30 I was getting my hair professionally colored every four weeks like clockwork.

While we were creating a schedule for a photoshoot recently we were asked “how many people can you shoot in an hour?” It was the only sentence in the email, so it stood alone on an otherwise blank white screen and made us think for a second. Out of context of photography, “how many people can you shoot in an hour?” sounds like a great way to get the FBI’s attention.

One of the questions we get asked the most is whether or not booking a professional makeup artist for your photo session is worth it. The short answer is yes, it’s totally worth it. But, we decided to do an experiment to show you WHY it’s worth it.

There are a lot of factors at play with a portrait such as lighting and posing, but nothing causes us to shriek “WOAH is that really how my face looks??” like the camera’s lens.

If you haven’t heard of “mewing” then count yourself lucky because you’re not missing much. “Mewing'' is a trend that recently went viral on TikTok. Essentially, it’s a type of facial exercise that allegedly reshapes your jawline to get rid of a double chin. If done correctly and often, it could also, again allegedly, lengthen your mandible and create more chiseled features.