Sunday Media / Portfolio and Professional
The photo people meet before they ever meet you
Open your own profile and look at it the way a stranger would. Cropped out of a wedding, four years old, somebody else’s shoulder still in the frame. That picture is doing the introductions for you every single day, whether or not it is any good at it.
Based in Guelph, ON. Shooting across Southern Ontario. Every fee, including travel, insurance and any ticket costs, is discussed and agreed in writing before anything becomes binding.
Placeholder image. Swap this for your own headshot work before the page goes live.
Corporate, LinkedIn, or actor. The photo that speaks before you do.
A headshot is the only photograph of you that has a job. Every other picture you own exists to be looked at later. This one goes out into the world on its own, at eight in the morning, into a room you are not in, and makes a decision about you before you have said a word.
It sits on a proposal, a bio page, an application, a casting profile, a conference badge, an email signature, the slide behind you at a meeting you were nervous about. It gets seen thousands of times more often than any other photograph in your life, and it is almost always the worst one you have.
People know this. That is why the cropped wedding photo stays up for four years. Booking a headshot means standing in front of a camera on purpose, being looked at, and having an opinion about your own face, and most people would rather do almost anything else.
So the session is built around that, not around the gear. You will see the frames on the back of the camera as we shoot. You will know within the first ten minutes whether it is working. Nothing is a surprise at the end, because the whole point of a headshot is that you have to be able to live with it.
A good headshot buys you the benefit of the doubt from someone who has never met you. That is worth an afternoon.
Thirty minutes to two and a half hours
Sessions run anywhere from 30 to 150 minutes depending on the package you choose. Thirty minutes is one look, one background, done properly. Two and a half hours is several looks, a change of background, an environmental set and time to relax into it, which is what most people actually need.
We coach, you do not hold a face
Nobody can hold an expression for a whole session and still look like themselves. You get small instructions instead: breathe out, drop your shoulders, tell me what you do for a living, now think about how annoying that question is. The frame we keep is the one right after.
Made to be cropped everywhere
Files are delivered to work as a square avatar, a tall portrait, and a wide banner crop, because the same photograph has to survive being cut four different ways by four different platforms without losing your eyes out of the frame.
You choose your own selects
At the end of the session we look at the frames together and you pick the ones that go forward for retouching. You are the only person who knows which version of your own face you can stand to look at every day, so you make that call, not us.
Where do people actually shoot these?
Headshots are the one session where the background is deliberately trying not to be interesting. It is there to hold you up, separate you from everything behind you, and then get out of the way. That means the choice is less about scenery and more about what the photograph has to do once it leaves the session.
There are broadly two families. A controlled setup, where we bring the light and the background and nothing depends on the weather. Or an environmental one, where the room you actually work in becomes part of the story, which is worth far more on a company bio page than another grey rectangle.
Both are shot in Guelph and across Southern Ontario. Here are the seven that come up most, what each one costs you in time, and who each one is genuinely right for.
The studio
Seamless paper or cloth, strobes, a fan, a mirror, a rail of your own clothesThe default, and the right answer for most people. Nothing about the photograph depends on the sky, the season or the time of day, so a January booking looks identical to a July one and we can shoot at ten in the morning without apologising for the light.
The other advantage is repeatability. If your firm needs eleven people to match, a studio setup is the only way that actually happens, and if you come back in three years for an updated frame it will sit beside the old one without looking like a different company.
The trade off is that a studio background says studio. That is exactly what a law firm or a casting profile wants, and exactly what a landscape architect probably does not.
Corporate, legal, medical, finance, actors, and any team that has to match.
Fastest option. Thirty minutes covers one look properly, sixty covers two comfortably.
Completely irrelevant, which is the entire point of booking one.
Looking too polished for your industry. Tell us the room this photo ends up in.
Your own office
A meeting room, a boardroom, a corner with a window, a corridor nobody usesWe bring the whole studio to your building and set it up in whatever room you can spare for the afternoon. Nobody loses half a day travelling, people come down between meetings, and the ones who were quietly dreading it get it over with in four minutes.
All we need is a space about three metres by four with a plug and a door, and one person on your side who owns the running order. We can shoot a clean backdrop and an environmental frame in the same visit, which gives everyone a formal option and a human one.
For team days, book people in ten minute slots and put the most reluctant person first. They set the tone for everybody who walks in after them, and once one person has laughed the queue relaxes.
Whole teams, firms refreshing a bio page, anyone who cannot spare a half day.
Add thirty minutes of setup and fifteen of pack down to whatever the shooting takes.
A room roughly three by four metres, one plug, and a door that closes.
Overhead fluorescents and green carpet. Both fight us. We can work around either.
Lobby and atrium
Glass frontages, stairwells, mezzanines, hotel lobbies, university atriumsA big glass frontage is a softbox two storeys tall. Stand someone four or five metres back from it, turn them slightly into the light, and you get an enormous soft source with a background that falls away into clean architectural shape. It reads modern and expensive without anybody having to say so.
Depth is what you are buying here. A studio backdrop is flat by design, but a lobby gives you thirty metres of falloff behind your head, so you separate from the background naturally instead of by lighting trick.
Permission is the catch. Building management, hotel duty manager, or campus facilities all need asking, and a tripod is usually the word that triggers the conversation. We handle that ahead of the day.
Founders, consultants, real estate, finance, anyone who wants scale in the frame.
Mid morning or mid afternoon. Avoid direct sun coming through the glass.
Lunchtime and five o’clock. Ask for the quiet hour, it is usually mid morning.
Permission, mixed lighting overhead, and colour bouncing off tinted glass.
Outdoors, open shade
The Arboretum in Guelph, campus paths, park edges, tree lined streets, courtyardsOpen shade means standing in shadow with a wide view of open sky, so the light comes from a source the size of the sky itself. Edge of a building, under a canopy, the north side of anything. It is the softest free light available and it looks nothing like a studio.
Behind you, a long lens turns green into a wash of colour with no detail in it. It flatters almost everyone, it dates far more slowly than a trend backdrop, and it is the answer for anyone whose work is not conducted in an office.
Ontario weather is the only real risk, so we agree a backup on the day you book rather than the morning it rains. A covered walkway or a window setup indoors covers almost every version of a bad forecast.
Therapists, coaches, trades, creatives, academics, and anyone allergic to a grey backdrop.
Overcast all day, or shade plus open sky at any hour on a bright one.
Under twenty minutes from almost anywhere in Guelph.
Dappled sun on faces, wind on hair, and green light bouncing up from grass.
Where you work
The lab, the workshop, the kitchen, the greenhouse, the site, the rink, the studioThe most underrated headshot there is. A clean portrait tells someone what you look like. A frame with your hands on the thing you are good at tells them what you do, and that is the version that gets remembered from a page of forty faces.
It only works if the space is genuinely yours. A stock office with a laptop open at a blank screen reads as a stock office with a laptop open at a blank screen. A slightly messy bench with your actual tools on it reads as competence.
We usually shoot this as the second look inside a longer session, after the clean background is safely in the bag. That way you leave with the formal one your employer needs and the interesting one you will actually want to use.
Trades, science, food, agriculture, makers, clinicians, anyone with a workspace.
Add thirty to forty minutes on top of a clean setup. Worth every one of them.
The tools, the apron, the coat, the instrument. Props you actually use, not props.
Safety rules, hair nets, hard hats, and confidential material in the background.
Brick and stone
Downtown Guelph, Elora, uptown Waterloo, Cambridge, Hamilton, StratfordLimestone, brick, a painted wall, a shaded doorway. Texture behind you at a distance where it goes soft, so it reads as place without competing with your face. It is the friendliest looking headshot on this list and the one that works hardest on a personal website.
The best walls are on the shaded side of the street or in a laneway with light bouncing in from one end. Direct sun on brick throws a hard orange cast onto your skin, which is why we walk the block first rather than choosing a wall on a map.
It is also the quickest to combine with something else. Twenty minutes on a wall, twenty minutes in a lobby two doors down, and you leave with two completely different sets from one parking spot.
Personal brands, small business owners, agents, musicians, hospitality, actors.
Shaded side of the street, or an overcast day when the whole block is even.
Saturdays and patio season. A weekday morning downtown is nearly empty.
Orange bounce off sunlit brick, bins, parked cars, and private property.
At home by a window
The one big window, a plain wall, a kitchen island, a home office cornerPerfectly legitimate, and often the most comfortable option for anyone who freezes in a studio. One large window with no direct sun in it is a soft source you already own. We work about a metre and a half from it, turn off every overhead bulb in the room, and use a wall as the background.
The catch is space and colour. Small rooms bounce their own paint colour onto your skin, so a strongly coloured wall behind you turns up in your face. A neutral wall, a bookcase at distance, or a plain door all work.
This is also the setup we recommend to anyone who has to take their own photo in a hurry. Window at forty five degrees, overheads off, phone at eye height, camera about arm and a half away. It will not be a headshot, but it will beat the cropped wedding photo.
Remote workers, writers, consultants, and anyone who hates being on a set.
Mid morning at a window with no direct sun. Overcast is even better.
One large window, a plain wall, and about two metres of clear floor.
Overheads fighting the window, and coloured walls tinting your skin.
How to choose, without overthinking it
Start from where it lands
A casting profile, a law firm bio page and an Instagram grid want three different photographs. Name the page it is going on and the background chooses itself.
Match the people beside you
If you are joining an existing team page, look at it first. A warm outdoor frame next to eleven grey studio ones does not read as personality, it reads as a mistake.
Get both if you can
One clean background for the things you do not control, one environmental for the things you do. Most sessions have room for both and it doubles what the files can do.
Indoors removes the variable
If the photo is needed by a date, shoot it somewhere with a roof. Rescheduling around Ontario weather is the most common reason a headshot ends up late.
Think about the crop, not the scene
Most of the background you are agonising over will be cropped away by a circular avatar. Beautiful backdrops matter far less than the two feet directly behind your head.
Check the boring things
Parking, building access, whether reception needs your name on a list, and whether there is a room you can change and check yourself in a mirror.
Our photographers already know these spots. They know which lobby says yes, which wall goes orange at four o’clock, which campus corner is empty on a Tuesday morning, and which meeting room in your building has the window worth using. Tell us where the photo is going and we will tell you where to stand. We are also building a full Photoshoot Locations guide for Southern Ontario, with maps, parking notes, permit details and the best hour for each spot.
A corporate headshot and an actor headshot are not the same job
They look similar from across a room and they are built to completely different rules. One is trying to say reliable. One is trying to say castable. One is trying to say approachable enough that a stranger will send you a message. Getting the wrong one is the single most common reason a headshot quietly does not work.
Tell us which of these five you need and everything downstream changes: how tight we crop, how hard the light is, what you wear, how much retouching happens, and how many frames you actually walk away with.
Corporate and executive
Law, finance, medicine, consulting, boards, annual reportsThe job here is credibility, and credibility is mostly consistency. The photograph has to sit beside forty colleagues on a firm page without one person looking like they were shot in a different decade, and it has to hold up at the size of a postage stamp beside a quote in a press release.
So the frame is a little wider than people expect, chest up rather than chin up, so the crop survives being cut square. The light is even and clean. The expression is the hard part: warm enough to be a person, settled enough to be trusted with money or a diagnosis. That gap is where most of the session actually goes.
If your organisation has a spec, send it to us before the day. Background colour, crop ratio, minimum pixel dimensions and whether they want space above the head are all easy to hit and impossible to fix afterwards.
Chest up, room above the head, safe to cut square or circular.
Grey, white, or a soft office. Whatever the rest of the team already has.
What you would wear to meet your most important client. One notch up, never two.
The brand spec sheet and a link to the current team page, before the session.
LinkedIn and job search
The one that gets seen more than any other photograph you ownThis one lives its entire life inside a small circle. Everything outside a tight ring around your head and shoulders will be cut away, which means the elegant wide frame you liked on the back of the camera turns into a picture of your forehead.
So we shoot deliberately tighter, we keep your eyes in the upper third, and we check the circular crop on the day rather than hoping. We also give you a wider version of the same frame for the banner and for anywhere that wants a rectangle.
The expression brief is different too. On a firm page you are being verified. On a profile you are being approached, and people approach faces that look like they would answer a message. A closed mouth smile with the eyes engaged outperforms a full grin almost every time, mostly because it survives being looked at a hundred times.
If you are job searching, update it before you start applying rather than after the first rejection. Recruiters open the profile before the resume roughly as often as the other way around.
Tight. Head and shoulders, eyes in the upper third, safe inside a circle.
Simple and low contrast so the thumbnail still reads at forty pixels.
Approachable beats impressive. Eyes doing the work, mouth relaxed.
A wide crop of the same frame for banners and about pages.
Actor and performer
Casting profiles, agent submissions, theatre programmes, pressDifferent rules entirely. A casting director is not deciding whether you seem trustworthy, they are deciding whether you are the person in the breakdown, and they are deciding it in a grid of two hundred thumbnails in a few seconds each.
So the frame is tighter and more vertical, the eyes carry everything, and the background is deliberately empty so nothing competes. Retouching is lighter than any other category on this page, because you have to walk into the room and be recognisably the person in the photo. Lines, freckles, scars and the shape of your own face stay.
Bring your types. Two or three looks that map to the roles you actually get called for, not the roles you wish you got called for. Your agent will usually tell you exactly what they want, and if they have, follow that over anything written here.
Tight and vertical. Eyes high, shoulders in, nothing else in the frame.
Two or three types you genuinely get cast as. Plain necklines, no logos.
Minimal on purpose. You have to look like this when you walk in the room.
Colour or black and white, crop, and file size. Their spec wins over ours.
Founder and personal brand
Websites, decks, podcasts, speaker bios, press kits, socialHere you are not filling one slot, you are stocking a cupboard. A website needs a wide frame with space for text over it. A deck needs you against something plain. Social needs vertical. A press kit needs one clean formal option in case somebody else crops it badly.
So we shoot the same person in a few different registers in one session: a straight headshot, a half length with hands, a working frame, and a couple of wider environmental ones. Same clothes, same face, different jobs, and suddenly you are not reusing one photograph in nine places.
This is the version that benefits most from a longer session, because the useful frames are the ones that come after you have stopped performing, and that usually takes about twenty minutes.
If content volume is the actual goal rather than one strong portrait, our Personal Brand and Content session is built for that and this one is not.
A set. Tight, half length, and wide with negative space for headlines.
One clean, one real. The real one is what people remember.
Two or three looks and anything the brand actually uses. Colours count.
A longer session. The good frames arrive after the first twenty minutes.
Team and staff days
Firms, clinics, agencies, schools, boards, associationsThe photography is the easy part of a team day. The logistics are the job. One consistent setup, a schedule that people actually keep to, a named person on your side who chases the two who forgot, and a plan for whoever is off sick on the day.
Ten minute slots work for most teams. That is genuinely enough time per person once the light is set, and it leaves room for the person who needs three minutes of talking before they unclench. Put the most nervous person first, not last.
Send a short wardrobe note out a week ahead. Two lines is enough: solid colours, no logos, bring a jacket even if you do not wear one. It removes almost every problem before it walks through the door.
New starters are the part everyone forgets. Ask us to save the exact setup, background, distance and light settings, and we can match a single person to the rest of the team months later so your page never goes patchy.
Ten minute slots per person once the setup is lit and tested.
A room, a plug, a running order, and one person who owns the schedule.
We record the setup so new starters can be matched later.
A two line wardrobe note to the whole team, one week before.
If you need two of these, say so when you book rather than on the day. A corporate frame and an actor frame want different lenses, different distances and different lighting, and the difference between planning for both and improvising both is about twenty minutes of session time.
The background is doing more work than you think
Nobody looks at a headshot and thinks about the background, which is exactly why it decides so much. It sets how formal the photograph reads, whether your hair separates from it or disappears into it, and whether the thumbnail still works when a website shrinks it to forty pixels wide.
Six options cover almost everything. Here is what each one actually says, and who it flatters.
White
Clean, modern, and the most demanding to light wellPure white is the standard for tech, medical and anything that wants to look current, and it is the one that drops straight onto a white website with no visible edge. It also has to be lit separately from you, with its own lights, or it goes grey and dirty rather than clean.
The thing to know is that white is unforgiving of light clothing. A white shirt on a white background needs deliberate separation or your shoulders vanish and you become a floating head. That is solvable, it just has to be decided before we shoot rather than after.
Modern, clinical, open. Reads well in tech, health and product companies.
Mid to dark tones. Avoid white and very pale grey unless we plan for it.
Light hair merging into the background. We add a rim light to fix it.
Grey
The one that flatters the most people and offends nobodyMid grey is the default for a reason. It separates from almost every hair colour and every skin tone, it takes light beautifully so we can run it from near white to near black without changing the paper, and it never fights what you are wearing.
It is also the safest choice when you do not yet know where the photograph will end up. Grey sits happily on a white page, a dark page, a printed programme and a conference slide, which is more than any other background here can claim.
Small graded shifts do a lot of work. Lighter behind darker hair, darker behind lighter hair, and a gentle falloff from one side gives depth without ever looking like a school photograph.
Professional, neutral, timeless. The safest answer to almost every brief.
Almost anything. Navy, charcoal, deep green, burgundy and white all work.
Teams, corporate, first headshots, and anyone unsure where it will be used.
Black
Dramatic, high contrast, and easy to overdoBlack puts every bit of attention on your face and nothing else. It is superb for musicians, performers, speakers and anyone who wants a portrait rather than a profile picture, and it prints beautifully.
It comes with two conditions. Dark hair and dark clothing both need a separate light behind you or they melt into the background entirely. And a black background on a white website leaves a hard rectangle sitting in the middle of the page, so it wants somewhere designed for it.
Serious, editorial, a little theatrical. Confident rather than corporate.
Anything mid to light. Black on black only works with a rim light.
Where it will sit. A black frame on a white page needs a designer’s blessing.
Colour
Brand colours, deep tones, and the trap inside themA coloured background is a strong choice and it is the fastest way to make a team page feel like it belongs to one company. Deep green, navy, warm neutral and muted terracotta all photograph well and stay readable at thumbnail size.
The trap is that light bouncing off a strong colour lands on your skin. A saturated backdrop close behind you will tint the side of your face, so we pull you further off it and shape the light accordingly. That takes space, which is why colour is a studio decision rather than a small meeting room one.
If your brand has an exact colour, send us the hex value rather than a description. Every screen renders a name differently and nobody wants to discover that afterwards.
Branded, deliberate, current. Strongest across a whole team at once.
The exact brand colour value, not the name of it, before the session.
Colour bouncing onto skin. Needs distance, so it needs a bigger room.
Environmental
Your office, your workspace, the room you are actually inThe background is a real place, thrown far enough out of focus that it reads as context rather than clutter. A long lens and distance do the work: you stand well away from whatever is behind you, and it dissolves into shape and colour.
It says more about you in one frame than three paragraphs of bio, which is why it outperforms a plain background on a personal website almost every time. It is also harder to match across a team, so it usually sits alongside a clean option rather than replacing it.
This is what I actually do. The most memorable option on this list.
Distance behind you. Five metres of depth beats any amount of decorating.
Screens, whiteboards, client names and anything confidential in shot.
Outdoor
Green, brick, stone, sky, and whatever the weather is doingWarm, human, and the least corporate looking option there is. Green at distance goes to a soft wash, brick keeps a little texture, and daylight on skin looks like nothing we can build indoors.
The cost is control. Light changes between the first frame and the last, wind rearranges hair, and Ontario can take a booked afternoon away from you with an hour’s notice. We shoot a slightly wider set outdoors because of it, and we agree the indoor backup when you book.
Season matters more here than anywhere else on the page, which is the next section.
Approachable, independent, human. Popular with anyone client facing.
Overcast, or open shade with a wide view of sky. Never direct midday sun.
Wind, dappled light, and a background that dates the photo to one season.
Choose the background that matches where the photo lives, not the one that looks best on the back of the camera.
A frame can look spectacular at full size and fall apart as a circular avatar forty pixels wide. We check the actual crop on the day, at the actual size, against the actual page it is going on, because that is the only test that counts.
Indoors it never matters. Outdoors it changes everything
If we shoot in a studio or an office, the season is irrelevant and that is precisely why people book it. A headshot taken in February matches one taken in July, and nothing about the photograph tells anyone when you sat down.
The moment we step outside, Ontario has opinions. The same wall, the same person and the same clothes give four different photographs across the year, and each version wants a different hour and different shoes to walk there in. Here is what each season actually offers, and what to watch for.
Spring
April to early JuneThe best outdoor headshot season nobody books. Everything behind you turns green in about three weeks, the light is long again, and the fresh growth photographs as a clean wash of colour instead of the tired dark green of late August.
It is also the practical season. Cool enough that a jacket stays on and looks intentional, warm enough that nobody’s face is red, and quiet at every location because the summer crowds have not arrived yet.
Mud is the only real cost. Bring the shoes you walk in and carry the ones you want photographed, which nobody has ever regretted.
A jacket or blazer that can stay on, layers underneath, waterproof soles.
Mud, sudden showers, and pollen if anyone’s eyes are prone to it.
Fresh green at distance, blossom rows, shaded courtyards, brick in soft light.
March. Spring is short and it goes straight into summer without warning.
Summer
Mid June to early SeptemberThe hardest season for outdoor headshots, which surprises people. Midday sun is directly overhead, shadows land under the eyes, and humidity is unkind to hair, makeup and anyone wearing a jacket for the first time since May.
The fix is the hour, not the location. Early morning before nine or the last two hours before sunset, or open shade with a wide view of sky at any point in between. In a heatwave we shoot indoors and stop pretending otherwise.
If a jacket is part of the look, keep it off until the frame is set. Carrying it for ten minutes is the difference between wearing it and enduring it, and that shows in a face.
Breathable fabrics, an undershirt, and a jacket you carry until we are ready.
Overhead sun, sweat, shine, humidity in hair, and mosquitoes near water.
Deep open shade, covered walkways, north facing walls, indoors at noon.
Early mornings are wide open. Late afternoons in July fill up first.
Fall
Mid September to late OctoberThe best light of the year and the busiest booking season we have. The sun stays low and warm all day, so the usable window widens instead of narrowing, and knitwear and a real coat photograph far better than a summer shirt ever will.
One caution specific to headshots: strong autumn colour behind you dates the photograph. Anyone looking at it in March knows exactly when it was taken, which is fine for a personal site and less ideal for a corporate page meant to last three years.
If you want the light without the timestamp, we shoot against stone, brick or evergreen instead of a wall of orange maple. Same season, same warmth, no calendar attached.
Knits, wool, a proper coat. Navy, charcoal, deep green, cream and burgundy.
Colour dating the photo, and sunset near half past six by mid October.
Stone and evergreen for timeless, hardwood canopy when you want the season.
Six to eight weeks ahead. October dates go first and they go fast.
Winter
November to MarchThe best time of year to book a headshot, because winter is when it stops being about the weather at all. Studio and office sessions are completely unaffected, availability is better than any other season, and January is when most people decide they need a new one anyway.
If you do want to be outside, an overcast snow day is the softest natural light there is, and fresh snow throws clean light straight up into your face. We shoot it in short bursts: ten minutes out, coat back on, warm room within sight. Cold shows in a face within about four minutes and there is no fixing it afterwards.
Golden hour lands near quarter past four in December, so an outdoor winter session starts and finishes in what feels like the middle of the afternoon.
A coat you like being seen in, thermals underneath, and boots you change out of.
Red hands and ears inside ten minutes, salt marks on dark wool, dry skin.
Indoors, honestly. Or a bright overcast day with a warm room ten steps away.
Anytime. Winter has the most room in the calendar of any season.
Nobody is going to ask you to hold a smile
The most common sentence we hear before a headshot is that the person is not photogenic. What they mean is that they have only ever been photographed while holding still, holding a face, and waiting for it to be over. That is the one condition under which nobody looks like themselves.
A held smile decays in about two seconds. The eyes go first, then the corners of the mouth, and the result is the expression everybody hates in their own photos. So we never ask you to hold anything. You get something to think about, or say, or do with your breath, and the frame we keep is the half second after.
Scroll on, and the three rows below will move with you.
Placeholder frames. Replace with your own headshot work before launch.
The ones we actually use
- Look at the floor, breathe out, and come back up to me on three.
- Tell me what you do for a living. Now tell me why you are actually good at it.
- Think about somebody walking into the room who you like. Do not act it, just think it.
- Smile with everything, then let it fall away slowly. We keep the middle of that.
- Say the last thing that made you laugh at work. Out loud, not in your head.
- Close your eyes, drop your shoulders, open them straight at the lens.
- Now give me the face you use when someone is talking complete nonsense in a meeting.
Small things that do the heavy lifting
- Push your chin forward and then slightly down. It feels absurd and it fixes almost everything.
- Turn your body about thirty degrees off the camera, then bring your face back to the lens.
- Weight on the back foot, front shoulder dropped. Square on reads like a passport photo.
- Narrow the lower eyelids slightly. That is the difference between engaged and startled.
- Shoulders down and back. Everyone lifts them when a camera comes out, nobody notices.
- Tongue behind the top teeth relaxes the jaw, which is where tension shows first.
- The frame we keep is almost always the half second after the laugh, not the laugh.
Tell your photographer what you dislike about photographs of yourself before we start, not after you see them. A side you prefer, teeth, a scar, a nose you have never liked, a jawline you are self conscious about. It is not vanity, it is direction, and it changes the angle, the lens and the height of the camera from the very first frame instead of the last one.
Dress one notch above your normal day
Not a costume, not a character, and not something bought yesterday that still has fold lines in it. One notch up from what you actually wear to work. Two notches and you look borrowed, which a camera picks up immediately.
Above the chest is all that survives the crop, so necklines, collars, shoulders and the colour beside your face are doing nearly all the work. A perfect pair of trousers contributes nothing. A collar that will not sit flat ruins the whole session.
Solid colours beat patterns. Mid to deep tones beat pale ones, because they let your face be the brightest thing in the frame. Navy, charcoal, deep green, burgundy, warm neutral and honest denim all photograph well against every background on this page. Bring more than you think and we will choose together.
For the ladies
- A blazer in a solid colour is the single most useful item you can bring. It structures the shoulders and it gives us a second look the moment it comes off.
- Necklines that sit clean: crew, boat, a shallow V, a collared shirt. Very wide or very low necklines read as undressed once the frame is cropped tight.
- Sleeves to the wrist or the elbow. Sleeveless is fine, but it changes the photograph more than people expect at half length.
- Texture beats pattern on camera: ribbed knit, fine wool, silk, crepe, good cotton.
- Jewellery small and few. One pair of earrings, one necklace, nothing that swings or catches a light.
- Makeup slightly stronger than daily, matte rather than dewy, and no SPF in the foundation because it flares white under flash.
- Bring a hair clip, a brush and whatever product you actually use. Wind and static are the two most common problems on the day.
- Bring three tops, one jacket and one thing you love that breaks all of the above. That last one is often the keeper.
For the gentlemen
- Fit at the shoulder is the only fit that matters here. Everything below the chest is cropped away.
- A jacket doubles your options in ten seconds. On, off, sleeves down, and you have three looks from one outfit.
- Collars must be stiff enough to stand up on their own. A soft collar that curls is the most common wardrobe failure we see, and it cannot be fixed afterwards.
- Iron or steam everything, including the parts under the jacket. Cameras find creases that mirrors politely ignore.
- Tie or no tie is a question about your industry, not about you. If in doubt, bring one and we will shoot both.
- Haircut seven to ten days before, never the day before. Tidy your own neckline and the beard edge the night before, not that morning.
- An undershirt under a light coloured shirt. It stops everything showing through under a strong light.
- Bring two shirts, one knit and one jacket. That covers every version of the session.
Law, finance, medicine, boards
Suit or blazer, plain shirt or blouse, sober colour, minimal jewellery. This is the one category where the expectation genuinely is formal, and dressing down to look approachable tends to read as underdressed rather than warm. A clinician’s white coat is a legitimate second look.
Tech, startups, creative
A good knit, an overshirt, a plain tee under a jacket. Solid, well fitting and clean. The trap is going too casual: a photograph of you in the shirt you slept in does not read as authentic, it reads as a photograph nobody thought about.
Trades, science, food, agriculture
Wear the real thing. The work shirt, the apron, the coat, the hi vis, the coveralls, clean but not brand new. It is more convincing than any blazer and it is the reason environmental headshots outperform studio ones for anyone who works with their hands.
Actors and performers
Plain, fitted, no logos, no distracting pattern. Bring two or three tops that map to the types you actually get called in for. Colour matters more than cut here, because it is the only thing setting the mood of a frame with nothing else in it.
What to skip
- Logos and slogans. They date the photo to the exact year and they crop badly.
- Tight repeating patterns, thin stripes, small checks and houndstooth. They shimmer on camera.
- Neon and hot fluorescents. They throw coloured light straight onto your face.
- Anything you keep adjusting. If you tug at it in the mirror you will tug at it all session.
- Shiny fabrics that catch a highlight, and sequins under any studio light.
- A fresh haircut from that morning, a first time spray tan, or anything new on your skin inside forty eight hours.
If you wear them, wear them
Your headshot should look like the person who walks into the room, so if glasses are on your face every day they belong in the photograph. Bring them clean, and bring the frames without lenses from your optician if you have them, because that removes reflections entirely.
Otherwise we angle the light and tilt the arms down a few millimetres behind your ears. That takes about thirty seconds and clears almost every reflection. Photochromic lenses are the harder problem: they darken in daylight and outdoors they will go fully tinted, so we shoot those frames indoors or bring a clear pair.
Bring more than you plan to wear, on hangers rather than in a bag, and we will lay them out and choose together in the first five minutes. Everything looks different under the actual light against the actual background, and the shirt you were sure about is often not the one that wins. Nobody has ever regretted bringing an extra jacket.
Light is what people are actually reacting to when they say they photograph badly
Almost nobody photographs badly. Most people have only ever been photographed under an overhead office bulb, a phone flash, or midday sun, and all three of those put shadow exactly where you least want it.
Change the light and the same face looks like a different person. Bigger and closer is softer. Higher and to one side gives shape. Straight on from the camera flattens everything, which is why a phone flash makes everybody look tired.
Here is each option we use, what it does to a face, and who it suits.
Window light
The best light most buildings already haveA large window with no direct sun coming through it is a softbox you did not have to carry. Stand about a metre and a half from it, turned roughly forty five degrees into it, and you get soft directional light with real shape and a natural falloff on the far side of the face.
The only rule that matters is turning off every overhead bulb in the room. Mixing a warm ceiling light with cool daylight gives you two colours of skin in one face, and that is far harder to fix later than it sounds.
Soft, natural, editorial. Nothing about it looks lit.
Forty five degrees into the window, a white card on the shadow side.
Offices, homes, anyone who tenses up the moment a strobe fires.
Overheads left on, and direct sun arriving halfway through the session.
Open shade
Standing in shadow with a wide view of open skyNot shade under a tree, which puts patches of hard sun across your face. Open shade means the sun cannot reach you but the sky can: the edge of a building, a deep doorway, the north side of anything, a covered walkway with one open end.
The source becomes the whole sky, which makes it enormous, soft and completely even. It is the most reliable outdoor light there is and it works from mid morning until early evening, which is why almost every outdoor headshot on our books is shot in it.
Clean, soft, neutral. Modern rather than romantic.
Facing out toward the open sky, long lens, background well behind you.
Any outdoor headshot at any hour that is not overcast or golden.
Dappled sun through leaves, and green bouncing up off grass onto skin.
Overcast
A softbox the size of the skyGrey days are the secret weapon of outdoor portraiture and the reason we rarely reschedule for cloud. A fully overcast sky is a giant diffuser: even light, no squinting, no harsh shadow, skin that looks like skin, and colours that go deep instead of washing out.
The one adjustment is the background. A white sky is a hole in the photograph, so we tilt down and keep a treeline, a wall or a hill behind you rather than the sky itself.
Soft, calm, honest. The most forgiving light there is for skin.
Fuller frames, treeline or wall behind you, a reflector for a little life in the eyes.
Anyone nervous about squinting, and any outdoor team day.
Blank white sky in frame, and flat light with no direction in the eyes.
Golden hour
The last sixty minutes before sunsetWarm, low and cinematic. For a headshot it is a stylistic choice rather than a default, because the strong colour cast and the rim of gold around hair read as a portrait rather than a professional photograph. On a personal website that is exactly right. On a legal directory it is not.
We put the sun behind you and expose for your face, then bounce light back in from a reflector so you are not just a silhouette. It moves fast: genuinely about forty usable minutes, so we are set up well before it starts.
Sunset in Southern Ontario moves by roughly three hours between June and December, so the same golden hour session starts near half past eight in July and quarter past four in December.
Warm, glowing, personal. Closer to a portrait than a headshot.
Backlit with a reflector in front, long lens wide open, flare on purpose.
Personal brands, speakers, authors, musicians, anyone client facing.
Arriving late. Forty minutes is the entire window and it does not wait.
One light studio
One big source, one reflector, and almost nothing elseThe workhorse of this entire page. A large softbox slightly above eye level and about forty five degrees off to one side, with a white reflector on the other side lifting the shadow. That is it, and it is what most of the headshots you admire are lit with.
It gives shape without drama. Move the reflector closer and the photograph gets softer and friendlier. Pull it away and it gets more contrasty and more serious. That single adjustment covers the distance between an approachable profile picture and a serious editorial portrait, using the same light in the same position.
It is also the fastest to set up and the easiest to reproduce, which matters enormously for teams and for anyone who will need a matching frame in two years.
Clean, shaped, professional. The default look of a good headshot.
Large softbox high and to one side, white reflector opposite, background lit separately.
Everything. Corporate, actors, teams, first headshots, on location days.
Reflector closer for friendly, further away for serious. Same light, different tone.
Two and three lights
Adding separation, background control and polishThe second light usually goes on the background, not on you. It controls exactly how light or dark the backdrop is, which is how a single roll of grey paper becomes near white or near black without moving anything.
The third goes behind your shoulder as a rim, putting a thin edge of light along your hair and jacket so you separate from the background instead of sinking into it. Essential for dark hair on a dark background, or light hair on white.
More lights is not better, it is more specific. We add them when the photograph needs something a single source cannot do, and we take them away the moment they start making you look lit rather than looking like you.
Polished and deliberate. Commercial rather than natural.
Key on you, one light on the background, one rim behind the shoulder.
Pure white or pure black backgrounds, dark hair, and matched team sets.
Overlighting. If it starts looking like a magazine cover, we take one away.
You do not photograph badly. You have just never been lit properly.
The overhead office bulb, the phone flash and the midday sun are the three lights almost every photograph of you has ever been taken under, and all three put shadow under your eyes. Nothing about your face has to change for a headshot to work. The light does.
Still recognisably you
Retouching on a headshot has one job and one rule. The job is to remove whatever was only true on that particular Tuesday. The rule is that the person in the photograph has to be the person who walks into the room, because a headshot that flatters you into someone else fails the moment you arrive.
So we take out the temporary and we leave the permanent. That line is not ours to move on your behalf, though, so if there is something you want handled differently in either direction, tell us and it is done. Nothing here is a policy you have to argue with.
What we take out
- Blemishes, spots and anything else that will be gone in a fortnight.
- Stray hairs across the face, flyaways and static.
- Shine on the forehead and nose, without flattening the skin.
- Lint, a stray thread, a collar that lifted, a twisted necklace chain.
- Distracting marks on the background and anything that crept into the edge of frame.
- Reflections in glasses, where the angle could not remove them on the day.
- Colour and exposure evened out across the whole set so the frames match each other.
What stays, unless you ask
- Lines, laugh lines and the general evidence of having lived.
- Freckles, moles, birthmarks and scars.
- Grey hair, thinning hair, and hairlines generally.
- The actual shape of your face, jaw, nose and eyes.
- Skin texture. Smoothed skin is the single fastest way to make a headshot look cheap.
- Teeth, beyond a gentle evening out of colour.
If any of these are things you would rather were softened, say so when you pick your selects. It is your face and your photograph, and it is a two minute conversation rather than a debate.
Crops, files and where they go
The same photograph has to survive being cut four different ways by four different platforms. So every retouched select is delivered in more than one shape, because a crop made by an algorithm is not a crop anybody chose.
Profiles and avatars
The one that gets seen most and thought about least. Eyes in the upper third, shoulders in, and enough margin that a circular mask never clips an ear or the top of your head. We check this at actual size on the day rather than assuming.
Bio pages and casting profiles
The standard portrait crop, chest up with room above the head. This is the one most company templates and casting platforms expect, and the one to send when somebody asks for your headshot without specifying anything else.
Banners, decks and websites
You off to one side with clean space beside you for a headline. Web designers ask for this constantly and almost nobody has one, which is why perfectly good headshots end up stretched across a hero banner.
Programmes, press and boards
Full resolution files, uncompressed, suitable for print rather than screen. Send these when a publication, a conference or an annual report asks, and never a file you downloaded from your own profile page.
What you can do with them
Your headshots are yours to use for yourself: your profiles, your website, your employer’s team page, press, applications, conference programmes and anything else where you are representing you. Print them, post them, hand them to a publication.
Do not crop out a watermark that is not there, because there is not one, and please do not run heavy filters over a file you paid to have retouched. If a third party wants the images for a paid advertising campaign rather than editorial use, tell us first and we will sort the licensing properly rather than awkwardly.
How long a headshot lasts
Two to three years for most people. Update it sooner if you change something structural: a new hair colour or length, growing or removing a beard, new glasses, a significant change in how you look, or a move into a role that reads differently.
Actors are the exception and should update more often, because the entire point is that the photograph matches who walks in the door today. If somebody has ever said they did not recognise you from your photo, that is the whole answer.
You choose your selects on the day, and the retouched files land within 3 business days. The complete edited gallery follows within 1 to 2 weeks. If you have a deadline, a conference, a launch or a submission date, tell us when you book rather than after, and we will build the schedule around it.
Your biggest ally, literally
Whoever is holding the camera decides what survives from that hour. On a headshot that matters more than on almost any other session, because there is nowhere to hide: no scenery to carry a weak frame, no second subject to look at, nothing in the photograph except you and whatever the person behind the camera managed to get out of you.
Tell them what the photo is for. Not the shot list, the job. A casting profile, a law firm page, a first proper LinkedIn photo, a conference bio for a talk you are quietly terrified of giving. Those sentences change the crop, the light, the lens and the direction, and most people never say any of them out loud.
Then look at their work in full. Not four brilliant frames on a grid, a whole set of ordinary people. A highlights reel proves they can photograph someone photogenic. A full set proves they can photograph everybody, which is the thing you are actually buying.
At Sunday Media you are working with a small team of seasoned photographers, which is deliberate. Small means the person you speak to is the person who shows up, they remember the conversation, and they have shot enough headshots across Southern Ontario to know what a nervous person looks like in the first two minutes and what to do about it.
Three or four you like
Headshots of other people, with one line each on why. Not to copy, to calibrate. Formal or warm, bright or moody, tight or wide. It takes ninety seconds and it is far more accurate than any adjective either of us could come up with.
The spec, if there is one
Your employer’s brand guide, your agent’s requirements, the platform’s minimum dimensions, the team page it has to sit on. Hitting a spec at the point of shooting is free. Discovering it afterwards is not.
What you dislike in photos of yourself
Left side, teeth, a double chin you are convinced is there, a scar, a bad year. Say it early. It is direction, not vanity, and it changes camera height, angle and lens from the first frame instead of the last.
The questions worth asking
- Who is actually shooting my session, and can I see a full set of theirs.
- Can I see the frames as we go, and do I choose my own selects.
- How many looks and backgrounds fit into the session I am booking.
- What exactly gets retouched, and what does not.
- Which crops and file sizes do I get, and when do they arrive.
- If this is a team day, how do you match a new starter later.
The week before
Headshot prep starts earlier than any other session on our books, because the two things that matter most, a haircut and your skin, both need a run up. Everything below is twenty minutes of work spread across a week, and it buys you a session where the only thing left to do is turn up.
The week and the night before
The day of
Eat something, arrive with time in hand, and hand the plan over the moment you walk in. Here is the whole list.
Session day checklist
You did it. Now the good part.
It was shorter than you expected and less painful than you had quietly braced for, and somewhere in the middle you forgot to be self conscious for about four minutes. Those are the frames.
Then keep an eye on your email and whichever channel we have been messaging you on. Here is exactly what arrives and when.
You choose your selects
Before anyone packs up, we look through the frames together and you pick the ones that go forward for retouching. Bring a second opinion if you want one, or take ten minutes with them on your own. Nobody knows better than you which version of your face you can stand to see every day.
Retouched selects
Your chosen frames come back fully retouched and delivered in every crop you need: square for profiles, vertical for bio pages, wide for banners, and full resolution for print. Enough to update everything the same afternoon they land.
The full gallery
The complete edited set, delivered to your private gallery on our website. Exact timing varies with the package you booked and the season, and your photographer will tell you the date to expect.
Your access code
A private code arrives with the delivery message. It is the key to your gallery, so treat it like a house key rather than a hashtag.
How to open your photos
Your gallery is private and it lives on our website. Everything you need is in the delivery message: a link, and an access code that looks something like this.
Please do not share your access code with anyone.
It is the only thing standing between your photographs and whoever it gets forwarded to. If your employer or your agent needs the files, tell us and we will arrange proper sharing. If you think the code has gone somewhere it should not have, message us and we will reset it the same day.
Fun tutorial: take our easy to use gallery for a spin before your own photos arrive. It is built in house, and the code above is a working demo key. Tap the access code to copy it, then use it on the Your Gallery page.
Go to our website
Open sundaymedia.ca on any device. Phone is fine for looking, a laptop is better for downloading.
Open the menu and choose My Gallery
It is in the main navigation at the top of every page.
Type in your access code
Exactly as it was sent, capitals included. That opens your session and nobody else’s.
Download, request edits, or order a print
Inside the gallery you can download the full resolution files and every crop, ask for edits on specific frames, and order prints from the set. If a crop you need is missing or a file will not open, message us and we will sort it out.
You have read the whole thing. That probably means the current one has to go.
Tell us where the photo is going and roughly when you need it, and we will handle the background, the light, the crops and the plan for the weather. All that is left for you is deciding what to bring.
Every fee is discussed before payment. Travel, insurance and any ticket or permit costs are agreed in writing before the binding contract, so nothing on your invoice is ever a surprise.
HeadshotsHeadshotsNice one. Want this list to go?
You just checked your first box. We can hand you the whole list as a file, so it lives on your phone instead of in a browser tab you will lose by Thursday.