For companies, Hero Shot provides a professional headshot service on-location in and around Sydney CBD, including North Sydney, Parramatta, Liverpool and the surrounding areas.

Our photography studio is located in Annandale and we see the majority of individuals, and small staff headshot sessions here.

Hero Shot also have photographers in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Truth be told, not everyone needs a professional headshot!

A professional headshot for an individual is the equivalent of a logo for a brand. It will help you get noticed in a crowded street and will also show people that you are established, care about your brand and have invested in your business or invested in yourself.

That being said, we know a lot of businesses that manage to get by without having a logo (my gardener for instance) or by having a logo thrown together (quite badly) in Microsoft Word.

Does that make them less credible? Not necessarily.

Is there likely to be the perception that they lack experience and carry a greater risk? That they are less invested in their product and could be a hiring decision that you regret?

Are they likely to need to jump through a lot more hurdles to be trusted? You bet!

There are lots of ways to market yourself and many of these don’t require an internet presence. We would say that if you only meet customers face to face and your customers aren’t looking for you online then you can probably get away with not having a headshot.

If you intend to take advantage of the internet and want to have a presence that will show people why you are the best person for the job, having a good headshot, whilst not crucial, is going to make your life a whole lot easier.

A professional headshot is a marketing tool and should be seen as a marketing expense, as an investment over an outright cost. If your headshot is done right it will make you more money than it costs you. In most cases it’s also a tax deduction meaning that it will normally cost you less than you actually think.

The quick answer to this is ‘Yes’ …ok, you can relax now!

You can use your headshot wherever you like, it’s yours! It is still worth considering where you will be using your headshot and if it is the right fit for that platform.

For example, you may be looking to tap into a business audience on Linkedin, a family audience on Facebook and millennials on Instagram. In such cases it would be smart to tailor your headshot to relate to these audiences. The Elite headshot session was designed with this in mind.

Colour can make a big difference to your headshot and is a huge topic in itself. Plain colours are generally your best choice.

Consider bringing colours the you get a lot of compliments in. There’s normally a reason for this.

Anything that matches your eye colour is always a bonus as it will help draw attention to your eyes.

If you are a business owner or a brand ambassador consider wearing a flash of your brand colour. This can be done subtly through an accessory like a tie or belt or through lipstick or eye shadow. For a bolder connection, consider a top or jacket of the same colour.

Subtle flashes tend to work best in our experience and can tie in nicely with your logo when featured on your website.

Rich colours along with gemstone colours (sapphire / ruby / emerald) typically work well on all complexions. Pastels along with patterns are generally best avoided for photography although there are sometimes exceptions.

If you genuinely feel this way, you are our favourite customer (by a long way)! Nothing gives us more satisfaction than producing awesome headshots for people that think they can’t be helped.

It is widely accepted that black is a sliming colour. We would tend to agree with this but it does depend on a few things…

How does black make me look slimmer?

Black is excellent at hiding the contours of the body (lumps and bumps). It does this because you cannot see shadows on black thus it gives the appearance that there aren’t any bumps when viewed at certain angles.

Black items appear smaller than light items

Dark colours recede whilst light colours come forward, this is simply a visual phenomena that makes black items appear smaller than light items when viewed together.

Absence of contours

Unfortunately, the absence of contour and shadow can also make you appear to be wider if you’re not posed correctly.

Dark or light?

In photography the eye is always drawn to areas of the highest contrast first, so if you want to have your headshot on a white background, wearing black will only emphasise your silhouette and so opting for a lighter colour can help to minimise your outline whilst bringing more attention to your face.

For more tips, with pictures, you can read our definitive guide on choosing colours for your headshots here.

The truth is that there are lots of tricks we have to make you look thinner on camera:

Pose

Posture

Body angle

Angle of light

Camera height

Lens choice

The fit of your clothing

Layering your look

Hair style

These components all have the capacity to make a much greater impact on slimming than wearing black.

We work with people of all shapes and sizes so we’ll always give you personalised advice on this when preparing your for a headshot session so its not overwhelming.

Professional hair and make-up is more akin to the sprinkles on the cake as opposed to the cake itself (sorry for comparing you to a cake). Without seeing you and knowing a lot more about you and your industry, it really isn’t something we’d be able to comment on…

If you feel like you can do your make-up yourself and feel you do a good job then you’ll still get a great headshot without professional make-up.

If you feel as though you’d like a more glamorous look or if you don’t feel confident doing your own hair and make-up, the make-up artists that we work with are fantastic and well worth the money they charge.

They have spent years learning how to accent features on the face, colour matching, toning and contouring to name a few. They can also give you one less thing to worry about before your shoot and will in most cases be able to do a better job than you at getting you camera ready.

For men we generally don’t recommend hair and make-up unless there is a specific look you are going for that will require it.

The cost for professional hair and make-up is $275 (including GST) and can be added to your headshot shoot. 

Sessions for companies can be done over a number of hours or several days.

Our session times for individuals range from 20 minutes to 2 hours. This doesn’t include hair and make-up.

In most cases, the length of your session will depend on how experienced you are in front of the camera, your ability to let go and trust the process.

In addition to this, the number of looks you wish to achieve, either through clothing or locations will also play a part in how long we will need for your shoot.

It’s difficult to answer this without also considering the cost of not having a headshot. This comes down to what kind of usage you’ll get from your headshot or by really considering what your headshot will be doing for you over the next 2-3 years.

Real Estate Agents for instance have their headshot on their website, flyers, property signage, sold stickers, social media, property listing websites.

With that kind of usage and exposure, even if you spent $1000, you could do so in the full knowledge that it will make you much more than this in future sales that would no doubt come from a trustworthy and welcoming portrait of yourself.

For others, a great headshot may be the difference between getting asked in for an interview or getting a promotion by showing you’ve the right image for the job.

In all of these cases, the relatively small cost for a professional headshot is likely to outweigh the expected returns.

With confidence we can say that we have never heard of anyone begrudging paying for a good headshot but we hear regular complaints from people who paid for a bad headshot that they couldn’t use.

Click here to see our packages and pricing.

Read our blog post on headshot pricing and why they cost what they do.