Show off your personality in your photos
One of the most valuable types of photos captured for experts during a portrait session are the direct address portraits.
These photos involve you looking directly into the camera, making eye contact digitally with your audience.
They’re valuable for a number of reasons.
First, they can be used for a wealth of image content needs, including your website, speaker/media kits, social avatar, and other marketing needs.
While these images are important to plug the various holes you have throughout your marketing and promotional plan, there’s another reason why these photos hold so much value in your image content portfolio:
Personality.
You see, in many cases, these specific visual assets represent, in one way or another, a digital introduction to those you serve.
They offer potential clients, members, subscribers and partners a glimpse of who you are based on the emotions conveyed through your facial expression and body language.
Slight changes to your mouth, eyes, eyebrows, head angle, shoulder positioning and overall posture all make a HUGE difference in the way you display confidence, approachability, expertise, empathy and likeability.
Based on the first impression vibe that they receive from that photo, this offers them an opportunity to qualify whether or not they want to learn more about you and how you can help solve their problem.
That’s why it’s essential for you to think about the aspects of your personality that you want to share with your audience BEFORE you set foot in front of the camera.
And then, once you are in front of the camera, you need to display these personality traits to be able to leverage them throughout your online presence.
This will offer you and your design team the chance to strategically leverage these photos where appropriate and necessary.
The next time you’re in front of the camera, don’t simply settle for either the reserved, closed mouth smile or the big cheesy, toothy grin.
Allow your photographer to guide you down a path that captures subtle changes to your mouth, eyes, eyebrows and posture.
It will go a long way to giving you a goldmine of visual options to help your audience better understand who you are.