Follow these steps to achieve solid results when you don’t have a photographer.
These will get you what you need for social media posts and staff announcements. The objective here is a single style of head and shoulders image that will work on Linkedin.
1. Use a recent model smartphone (ideally an iPhone in ‘Portrait Mode’)
2. Hold the phone sideways – in landscape.
3. Choose a relevant place to take the picture. If it’s a corporate shot, stay inside in a well lit room with lots of natural light. Lobbies are often really good.
4. Don’t stand your subject in front of things. Make sure anything in the background (including any wall) is as far away as possible (at least 20 feet). The picture doesn’t need anything in it apart from the person. Don’t try to put logos behind them.
5. Have the subject standing at a slight angle with their head turned toward you. Don’t stand them square on to you.
6. Get the lens close enough to them so that their torso fills the frame. Their head should be below the top of the frame, and upper body at the bottom of the frame.
7. Keep the camera at the height of their eyes, don’t shoot up or down.
8. Position them slightly to the left or right of center never exactly in the middle.
9. Take loads of pictures, and try to vary their expression. Do some serious, and some smiling.
10. Don’t edit or filter any of the images, just keep the original file and email it to whoever’s using the image without any reduction in size.
Follow each of these ten steps and you’ll have usable photography available to you for all kinds of digital projects.
