So what would you wear in a headshot shoot?
It’s trickier than you think. What to wear when getting your headshots taken. Your favourite top? The cardi your girlfriend gave you? Or your best suit you pull out once a year for weddings and and other occasions. The answer is all of them if you want, as long as they follow a few simple rules. Essentially an actors headshot is there to sell you and anything that starts to distract from your head will do you a disservice.
The dark top creates a natural vignette for the face
What not to wear
Stripes, fussy collars, patterns and patterned collars all make for really distracting elements when it comes to headshots. The eye’s journey around a headshot travels from the centre of the picture to the eyes of the sitter, taking in everything that it needs to. Wear a strongly patterned top, gives something else for the eyes to focus on and detracts from you. A casting director will only give an actors headshot up to a second of their time. The last thing you need is that casting directors focus being pulled away and diverted from selling you the actor.
Again, the dark top compliments the dark hair creating a striking frame around the face for this actors headshot
IMHO…
Having taken my fair share of headshots, and edited, cropped and sifted thousands of pictures I’ve come to the conclusion that darker colours work best. They create a natural vignette around the bottom of the picture for the face, allowing the viewers eye to travel automatically to the face. Artists have for years understood that the viewer is automatically drawn to the lightest or most interesting part of the picture. Therefore as a photographer taking actor headshots, I need to make sure that the most interesting part is the eyes and the face.
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