TOO SHADOWY

We're getting better. Katherine is at least turned the right way with respect to the light. But, the angle is still wrong. There are deep shadows on the right side of her face. Dramatic lighting like this might have a place in portrait or art photography. In a business photo, it lends a sinister quality - which might be fine if your boss is Darth Vader. Otherwise, it should be avoided.

A face in shadow creates disconnection. It conveys that something is hidden. There is a subliminal hint of dishonesty and concealment. Connection is created through openness and honesty. Anything that undermines that message undermines the effectiveness of your headshot. There’s a reason we say that a dishonest person is a little shady. Or that we say that someone who withholds information is keeping us in the dark. The sense that we should know something we don’t makes us uneasy, and we aren’t likely to form a solid relationship with someone who makes us feel uneasy. When that underlying uneasiness is a side effect of a shadowy business headshot, potential clients might avoid you without even knowing why their instincts are telling them to.

To put it in scientific terms, which you can read more about by visiting The Science Behind Your Headshot, there are two systems at work in the human brain. The first can be thought of as the subconscious - the part of the brain that scans all the time just to make sure everything is all right. This is the part that scans a crowd and, if it sees an angry face, flags it as something out of the ordinary and potentially dangerous. It then summons the second system to come make a judgment: is that angry face in the crowd a threat or not? That can be thought of as the conscious mind. This is that part that takes in the details and decides whether the subconscious alarm was valid or not.

With the deep shadows on Katherine’s face in this shot, it’s likely the subconscious, System 1, if you will, is going to flag this as “something is not quite right.” And those shadows give System 2, the conscious mind something negative to latch onto. It’s probably the rare person who will actually, consciously, judge you as sinister because of a shadow on your face in a photograph. But remember, first impressions happen in 1/10th of a second. You need a business headshot that will make your potential client’s entire brain say, “Oh, doesn’t that person look nice and trustworthy and good to do business with.” Anything at all that disrupts that flow, even subconsciously, diminishes the effectiveness of your headshot.