It is very important for Actors to get Professional Headshots by a Photographer who specialises in doing Actor Headshots
Here are some things you have to look for in a good headshot. What your headshot shouldn’t be is just a really pretty picture of you. That’s not going to help you. You have to put yourself in a position of a casting director.
When casting directors are looking through the headshots they are looking for an actor for a particular role. You have to think what kind of role you are most likely to be submitted for. You have to figure out what your acting type is, and your photos should reflect that. If you know that you mostly get cast as a mom, or business executive, it should be reflected in your pictures.
If you want to promote yourself as a Professional Actor you have to find a photographer who specialises in Actor Headshots. You can’t go to a portrait specialist, or somebody who is doing wedding photography, because they don’t know what to do. They know how to take pretty pictures, but that’s not what the Actor Headshot is.
Let’s assume you find a headshot photographer who specialises in actor headshots, whose work you’ve looked at. But before you go for your photo session you need to understand what your acting type is, what your brand is, what is that you are trying to portray.
If you are just starting your acting career and not sure what your acting type is, you have to find an industry professional who can help you with that. When you book a photo shoot with us, you can choose to have a complimentary 30 min acting career orientation session with Natela, our photographer, who is also a prominent Acting Coach. It is conducted prior to the photo shoot, in person or via Skype.
You’ll need 2 main headshots - one smiley and one more serious or more dramatic, depends on your type. Another 2, 3 or 4 headshots can reflect your different moods or ability to play a character. If you are a real character actor or actress, don’t go for some kind of crazy expressions, extreme headshots - this is a big no-no, it screams “amateur”.
You cannot go wrong with a warm smiley headshot. You want to look like if there is something going on. You want the photographer to catch that moment. This is something that you are going to have to look for when you look at the work of headshot photographers, to see if they are catching those kind of moments with their subjects; something is going on behind the actors’ eyes, there is a twinkle, there is a spark…
When the casting director is looking through hundreds and hundreds of headshots they want to see the one that makes them go “wow!”. That thing that is going to stop them - that's what you want in your headshot.