What is an Acting Headshot?

A headshot is a photo used in the entertainment industry to represent talent such as actors, dancers, models or singers. It's a photograph of you. I also think it’s important to address what a headshot is not. A headshot is not a portrait, it’s not a modeling portfolio image, and it’s not some some random selfie you took. It’s a professional image, usually cropped from the chest up to an inch over your hair, in which the lighting is set so particularly that viewers are drawn directly to your face.

Professional Headshots Los Angeles

The talent should look as real and natural as possible. The image will usually have your information on it so that whenever you attend castings or an audition you can leave it behind with the production in order for them to remember you as they deliberate on who they want to cast for their project.

In a headshot, your eyes and face should be the sole focus. No distracting clothing, backgrounds, or colors that take away from the viewers seeing you. The lighting should serve to illuminate and highlight your characteristics and features to give enough information for a casting director to decide whether you have the look they're searching for.

An actors headshot should show their personality or reflect emotional range. This photograph of you is an opportunity for you to show how versatile you can be as an actor. It can show how many different characters you can transform into and the more characters can be pulled out of you, the more opportunity there is for you to get work.

Often times actors will come into a session and glare plainly into the camera with zero emotion or sometimes they come in trying to give glamorous looks or model type poses. This is not what headshots are. Focus on emotion, storytelling with your expressions, personality, versatility, and range. Don’t be afraid to use different expressions! Crinkle your forehead, move your eyebrows, squint your eyes, or play with different smirks and smiles. Actors shy away from this typically because they come into the session wanting to look amazingly attractive, and that might work for some, but in serious acting productions people are casting characters to tell stories not models.

How An Actor Headshot Can Impact Your Career

A headshot is one of the determining factors whether or not you get sent out to auditions or even hear back from auditions. They’re essentially an actors key to unlock the door of opportunities, so why do so many not want to invest in good ones?

When your headshots are bad quality, or worse it looks like your friend took them for free, this can reflect that you don't take your career seriously and may not be professional on a production set. If you don’t believe in yourself to invest in hiring a professional headshot photographer to shoot your headshots and try to cheap your way out of them and consequently end up with shots that aren’t industry standard, why should anyone take you seriously?

Better yet, if you’re acting headshots are cheap looking or low quality, what else can be presumed that is low quality? At this point, can it be safe to assume that you may have also cheapened out on real, quality acting classes and training? Of course, one wouldn’t be wrong to assume that.

Actor Headshots In Los Angeles Can Be Expensive, So What Should You Do?

Yes, headshots can be expensive. Yes, actors in Los Angeles are often times broke, but just remember YOU chose to do this. This industry isn’t going to look at a cheap headshot and think, “Oh poor you, you must be struggling to make it in Hollywood while pursuing your passion.” No. There are tons of actors who will gladly live out of their cars for months just so they can save enough money to get high quality headshots. There is zero excuse.

You need to invest in high quality professional headshots as soon as you jump in this industry.

For more headshots and entertainment tips, please see my other Actor Resources.

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Brandon Andre – Headshots Los Angeles

If you need a professional actor headshot in Los Angeles, contact me to set up a photo shoot.