A simple guide to finding the best actor headshot photographer for your budget
A typical scenario – You’re in Sydney and your professional headshot profile photo needs an update so, like most people you search for “Best Actor Headshots Photographer in Sydney?“.
The search result is a long list of professional photographers offering professional actor headshots, all with years of experience, who will make you feel relaxed and capture a great headshot.
You look through a few website portfolios and immediately contact a few. Each professional photographer typically asks the same questions –
- What are you looking for?
- When?
- Where?
- What is your budget?
- Do you need hair and makeup?
Before you begin contacting every photographer on your list it helps if you have a clear understanding of who your customers are and what your customers want?
What Your Customers Want?
In business marketing we talk about being “customer-centric” – all that really means is matching what your customer is looking for to your personal product or brand.
Who is your target customer, what do they want and what is most important to them?
Obviously, for photography it’s your look; but there are many other factors and some may surprise you. This may include – are you responsive? how quickly do you respond to a call out ? Do you have a social media following
A Casting Agent has hundreds, if not thousands of actors or models to choose from so it’s very important that your photo maximises your chance of getting shortlisted, getting an interview and then the job.
As an actor, you’ve less than three seconds to make a positive impression
What are Casting Agents looking for?
I cast TV commercials and look at thousands of photos weekly.
For me first of all the photo needs to be a good indication of what the person looks like… seems obvious I know but so many don’t give us a good idea.
With this in mind things I don’t like:
– too much make up
Leon Fryer, CASTING DIRECTOR, I4CASTING.com.au
– filters of any kind
– coloured contact lenses, always make the eyes look a bit dead
– not a big fan of chin resting on hand, always looks a bit contrived and reminds me of Ricky Gervais in the office
– but the thing I hate the most: character shots like actor as a nurse / policeman, or the actor in a different hat or glasses even though they don’t normally wear glasses, these shots just tell me they are inexperienced.
Things I like:
-natural makeup state
– naturalistic lighting
– at least 1 photo with a natural smile, more inexperienced actors often hide the fact they can’t smile by looking all serious (but we can tell)
– photos which show some of their personality
