Headshot Posing: Making Your Subject Look Confident With One Easy Step

Confidence Is In The Eyes

When doing portrait photography, it is very important that your subject is looking comfortable and confident. Some people are just naturally confident in front of the camera, some need a little help. Here is one simple thing you can do to make your subjects look confident for their headshots (followed by a lot more tips on headshot posing).

Renowned portrait photographer Peter Hurley coined the term “squinch”. You’ll see this technique featured in just about all of his work. A “squinch” is when someone narrows their eyes using their bottom eyelid rather than their top eyelid. Sometimes your subjects may be confused by these instructions. I will sometimes tell them to squeeze their eyes shut rather than squint or to squint by slightly flexing their cheek muscles. Just make sure they are not squinting too much making themselves look tired. It is a subtle narrowing of the eyes done primarily by flexing the muscles around the bottom of your eyes, which will bring up your bottom eyelid. I also sometimes tell people to give me “the model look” and often they will do this exact thing. Go ahead and try it for yourself! Confidence is communicated through the eyes. Getting a good “squinch” out of your subject paired with solid body positioning will take your portraits to another level.

Have some fun with it, make fun of the situation and how ridiculous it is to be talking about different ways to squint. The word “squinch” itself is a funny word that will sometimes get a laugh out of people. The whole reason for doing this is to make your subject feel comfortable, so lean into the funny, ridiculous nature of asking them to do this. You’ll probably end up end up getting some great smiles and laughs out of it. It may not seem like much, but the difference can be huge!

Make Your Subject Laugh

Alternatively, if you can get a genuine laugh out of the person, their eyes will naturally do the squinch and you’ll get a big smile out of it too. Just make sure to communicate to them that they do not have to hold in their laugh and that if they do laugh, they need to keep looking towards the camera. Many people will try to hold back a laugh at first because they view a photoshoot as a setting where they need to be professional, but I do not believe that at all! Photography should be fun!

Anyone can set up a backdrop and some lights, then tell a person to smile for the camera. The way you can make yourself stand out is to be engaging during the headshot session. Actually get to know your subject, have some fun with them. Be goofy and make them laugh! Doing this will make them feel more comfortable in front of the camera which will result in more natural looking expressions and better smiles. Another thing this will do is provide a more enjoyable experience for your subjects. They will look at the pictures you took and have good memories from that photoshoot. A client will like their headshots better if they had a good time during the shoot than if the shoot was awkward or tedious, even if the photos look exactly the same.

Keep in mind that every shoot will be different. Gauge your subject’s energy to determine how they communicate and what they need to have an enjoyable experience. If a person is nervous about having their picture taken and is saying things like “I am always awkward in front of the camera”, that is your queue to slow down and chat with them for a bit before sticking a camera in their face. Lighten the mood and make them trust you. I have also worked with people who have done a hundred photoshoots in their life, know what to do, know what they want, and just want a streamlined, smooth photoshoot. In that case, just do your thing and take some great pictures. Sometimes, you may be doing headshots for a whole company and have to knock out headshots in rapid succession. Those cases are tough, but just do your best to make the atmosphere welcoming and low stress. Make sure to introduce yourself and ask how their day is going. One thing I would recommend doing on every shoot, is knowing the person’s name and using it any time you want to make a posing adjustment. Even in a short timeframe, doing this will make them feel listened to and more comfortable in front of your camera.

What Poses to Use For Headshots

Ok, at this point, we are well beyond the one simple step I mentioned in the title. The “squinch” was that one easy thing to change to make your subject look more confident. If you want to learn more about my advice on posing, continue reading!

The posing for headshots isn’t nearly as complex as something like engagement portraits, but it is still just as important. The poses you put your subject in tell a lot about them and influence the first impression their headshots give to viewers. Before selecting a pose for your shoot, you should communicate with your subject to figure out why they need headshots, what they are hoping to accomplish with having professional headshots, who will likely be looking a the headshots, and what their personality is like. Ideally, you should be having this discussion prior to the day of the shoot so you can prepare.

You will often run into people who need a headshot to go on their company’s website, or a group of employees from a company all getting headshots together. In these cases, you should go look at their website to see what posing standards they already have and try to match that. If they have a mix of poses on their site, just try to match the tone of those poses. If everybody is doing some form of standing with a smile, for example, do that, and add some subtle variety to the poses so you can match the amount of variety they already have. If a company wants all matching headshots for all of their employees, work out what pose you will be using and make sure you can replicate it. The posing for these types of shoots is typically very subtle (i.e. shoulders turned slightly to the right or left). If you do, let’s say 30 headshots, and 5 of them are posed differently from the rest, they will stand out like sore thumbs so make sure you have a plan for getting the same pose over and over.

Individual headshots are where you can get a bit more creative with the posing. This could be a person with their own business, or someone looking for a LinkedIn picture to advertise themselves to potential employers. Either way, communication before the shoot is very important. This goes back to getting to know a bit about their personality, industry and goals for the pictures. You want to show the person in their element, and capture their personality. Think about what a pose communicates to the viewer. Is this person trying to appear kind and approachable? Consider having them sit on a comfortable (but still nice looking) chair with a relaxed pose. Does this person want to look attentive and helpful? Maybe pose them leaning in as if you are telling them something important and they are an engaged listener. You will often take headshots that are tweaks on standing somewhere and looking at the camera, but, whenever possible, try to add some interest to the poses. Those headshots will stand out! Outfit selection is also very important to the message a headshot delivers. Click here to learn more about that.

What Expressions to Use For Headshots

Selecting an expression for a headshot is a similar process to selecting the pose. What expression makes the most sense? Headshots are often smiling, but they don’t always have to be. Most of the emotions are communicated through their eyes so you can still achieve a kind tone without having them do a big smile. What expression looks the best on your subject? The last thing you want is for an expression to look forced or fake. In my experience, a lot of people when straight up told to smile, will give a smile that looks fake. Your best bet is to get a real smile out of them. Not by telling them to do it, but by, again, making them laugh or complimenting them. This doesn’t work with everyone so your mileage may vary, but I will often just tell people “that smile looks so fake, give me a real one!” in a fun, kind of teasing tone, and that will get a laugh out of them.

For serious expressions, the squinch is very important. Looking at the top, side-by-side pictures, you can see how the photo transforms from someone who looks like they are barely paying attention or scared, to someone who means business. This was for a bartender who wanted a confident and slightly enigmatic look to the headshot.

Bonus Tip: The Jawline

Here’s one more for you. You want your subject to have a well defined jawline, it just looks better. This may already be the case for your subject and you won’t need to do anything, however sometimes you need to pose your subject to help accentuate their jawline. To do this, I will have my subject stick their jaw out at me, in other words, tilt their neck forward to bring only their head towards the camera. This one can be difficult to communicate, there are 2 ways I will tell someone how to do this. One is simply by turning sideways and demonstrating how to do it, usually followed by a joke about how they need to be like a Pigeon. The other is telling them you have an imaginary string going from your camera lens to the tip of their chin and you are giving it a tug. One of these 2 will get the point across. It doesn’t need to be so much that their neck looks shorter, but if you do this, you will notice their jawline becomes much sharper.

Telling a subject to do this can be a bit uncomfortable for them so you want to make sure to lean into how ridiculous of a request this is and reassure them that as weird as it feels, the camera loves it. If doing this is making your subject very uncomfortable, then forget it. A sharper jaw line is not a worthwhile tradeoff for a visibly uncomfortable person. If implemented correctly, however, this is a great thing to try out as needed.

Develop Your Style

At the end of the day, you will find a style that works best for you. These tips can help you to start making intentional decisions about how your headshots will look, but the only way to get good at it is to just try things out. At the end of the day, headshot photography is mostly people skills. The lighting and camera settings are not overly complicated for headshots, its the rest of it that takes time to master.

Go Check out Peter Hurley’s Work at https://peterhurley.com/

He also has a great Youtube video about squinching that can be found here

To check out more of my headshot photography, visit my Portfolio

William Weeks

1474 S Acoma St, Denver, CO 80223

719-640-7438