I know. Quite harsh, right? Using the word pain is not something usually associated to photographers. So I thought. Our services have at times been compared to dentists to which perhaps the word pain is associated with for most people.
As a business owner, I need to practice what I preach. I encourage clients to update their photos whenever there is a rebranding, change in career, or even a change in looks. Even if I have gone through several headshot sessions by now, I still cannot help but feel the pain or perhaps the hesitation in changing profile photos. I tried to go deeper into this thinking as I went through a headshot session with Allan over the weekend due to the need to change my current one. I thought it would be best to share the headshots I've had since we started doing headshots. Here is the first one I had. This was the around the time Allan just became an associate photographer of top headshot photographer, Peter Hurley. This headshot photo was taken sometime April 2014.
Everything was going well with the white background until we have had some requests for outdoor headshot photos. Allan usually tries things out with me first to perfect the process so we thought of me having an outdoor headshot to show people how we approach such a situation. This headshot photo was taken around December 2015. I remember the time frame quite vividly as I was recovering from a severe allergy attack mostly on my face hence could not wear any make up.
Again, I was pretty happy with that the outdoor one until we thought of showcasing a dark grey background as an option. I truly like this photo as I am quite biased on the dark background. This headshot photo was taken February 2016.
I was not ready to let go of this photo just yet until I was required to have a white background for a headshot for a group I was a part of. All of my business colleagues in the photo had white backgrounds so I thought of doing the same. It was not right to use the 2014 one as it was not current and I felt my hairstyle has changed already. So I went through a headshot session our clients go through these days. I suppose it was a good time to once again feel what our my clients feel from the start of the shoot until the end of the shoot. As Allan and I were deliberating which photo to use, I kept distancing myself from the photo and pretended I did not know the person. Will I trust that person? Will I respect that person? Within the context by which the photo will be used, the more pertinent question is this: Will I do business with this person?
Having been guided by these, I ended up using this photo which ended up to be quite different from the previous ones given the questions I just answered.
As I went through the latest headshot process, I remembered one of the famous lines of Jack Nicholson in the movie, As Good As It Gets. He said, "What if this is as good as it gets?" I think the hesitation in changing the photos lies in the fact that we think that our current or latest headshot photo is perhaps as good as it gets and that whatever look we are pleased with will never be equaled nor surpassed. But our circumstances change. We transfer companies. Our businesses rebrand. We get older (and wiser, I hope!). So updating the photo communicates to our audience that we stay current with the times. As long as the proper process to a headshot session is employed, we will always have a believable, respectable, and professional headshot profile photo that accurately presents us to our target audience.
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