How to Prepare Your Team for Headshot Day

Send one email a week out. It needs to say four things: the date and how to book a slot, wear a solid mid-tone colour, skip the brand-new haircut, and bring the glasses you actually wear. That covers roughly every problem that shows up on the day.

The rest of this is the reasoning, plus a template you can paste and send.

Why the email matters more than you'd think

On a headshot day, the photographer controls lighting, direction, and framing. The photographer does not control what people are wearing or how they feel about being photographed — and those two things account for most of the difference between a set of portraits a team likes and a set they quietly avoid using.

People who arrive knowing what to expect are also faster, which matters when the list runs 8 to 12 people an hour. A confident sitter takes three minutes. An ambushed one takes eight and looks ambushed.

What to wear

Solid, mid-tone colours. Jewel tones, navy, deep green, burgundy, charcoal. They separate cleanly from a grey or white backdrop and they hold up when the image is shrunk to a 200-pixel circle on a staff page — which is where most of these photographs actually live.

Avoid:

• Tight patterns. Fine checks, narrow stripes, and small herringbone can shimmer or buzz when photographed. It is distracting at full size and worse when scaled down.
• Pure white and pure black tops, unless that is genuinely your look. White pulls the eye away from the face; black can merge into a dark backdrop and leave a head floating.
• Large logos and slogans. They date the photograph and they compete with the face.
• Anything you are about to retire. These photos last three to five years.

Bring a second option if you are unsure. Changing a jacket takes thirty seconds and gives you a real choice later.

Fit beats price

A well-fitting inexpensive jacket photographs better than an expensive one that does not fit. Shoulders are the thing the camera notices.

Grooming

Do not get a haircut the day before. Two weeks out is the sweet spot — long enough to settle, short enough to look deliberate. The same goes for any significant colour change.

Bring your own glasses. If you wear them daily, wear them in the photograph; a portrait of you without them is a portrait of someone else. Anti-reflective lenses photograph best. If yours are heavily reflective, we can usually angle them out.

Bring what you'd normally carry. Powder for shine, a comb, lip balm. Overhead lighting and a warm room are unkind to foreheads, and thirty seconds with a powder puff saves ten minutes of retouching.

Shave, or don't, on your normal schedule. Stubble at its usual length looks like you. Stubble on an unusual day does not.

What actually happens in the chair

Worth saying explicitly in the email, because most people's anxiety is about not knowing.

The photographer will tell you where to stand, where to put your weight, what to do with your hands, and where to look. You do not need to arrive with a pose. Most people are done in three to five minutes and see a frame they like on the back of the camera before they leave.

The one instruction worth arriving with: think of something specific. A real expression comes from a real thought. "Smile" produces a face that looks like someone was told to smile.

The email you can send

Paste this, fill in the brackets:

Subject: Headshots on [date] — 5 minutes, here's what to know We're having professional headshots taken on [date] in [room]. Book your slot here: [link]. It takes about five minutes. A few things that make a real difference: - Wear a solid mid-tone colour — navy, green, burgundy, charcoal. Avoid tight patterns, large logos, and pure white or pure black tops. - Bring a second option if you're torn. Swapping a jacket takes seconds. - No brand-new haircuts the day before. Two weeks out is ideal. - Wear your everyday glasses if you wear them. - Bring powder, a comb, lip balm if you use them. You don't need to plan a pose — the photographer will direct you, and you'll see the shot before you leave. These photos will be used for [staff page / LinkedIn / proposals], so they'll be around for a while. Questions: [coordinator].

Send it a week out, then again the morning of. The second send is the one people read.

If someone doesn't want to be photographed

Some people genuinely hate it, and pushing produces a photograph that shows exactly that. A quiet slot at the end of the day, away from colleagues watching, solves it more often than persuasion does. It is worth offering.

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Planning a session for a DC-area team? See on-site corporate headshots in Washington, DC for how the day runs and what the room needs. If you're running an event rather than an office day, start with our complete guide to the headshot lounge.