I see it often; a LinkedIn profile picture is an awkward crop from some random snapshot. Sometimes the subject has a sunburn, or windblown hair and there's often the body part of a someone standing nearby that was a victim of that harsh crop. In many cases your business portrait is the first impression that a potential employer will make of you so invest in it and trust it to a professional photographer. 

We're lucky to have a thriving and diverse job market in north Texas and the Dallas area is home to a number of corporate headquarters as well as North American campuses for international companies. I regularly see clients who are looking to transition roles, are in the hunt for a promotion or are just looking to update their image. 

The image below is one example of why you want to trust your headshot to a professional. I was contacted by a corporation in Utah to photograph one of their local Dallas clients to produce a banner for an upcoming conference. They had a short timeframe and very specific requirements for the image, from the background to the aperture that they wanted the image shot at. The output print file size and color space was also specified. I read all the requirements and replied confidently that I could handle the job. 

The subject wanted to show his personality and his hairstyle and dress conveyed that. White can be tough for a number of reasons; it tends to make things in the frame look bigger than they actually are and of course properly exposing the image for that bright area and his darker eye glasses was a bit tricky and needed some finesse in post processing.  After a few minutes of trying different poses, we liked this one best.  However, I noticed that the angle of his head was unflattering to his neck and the white jacket was making him look larger than he actually was.  I took a few more frames making some micro adjustments in the posing and voila! We ended up with the image on the right.

A professional photographer will know how to make you look your best in any image, but when it's your corporate headshot there could be a promotion, or money on the line, so invest in it!