Brought to you by The Light Committee:
There is a cognitive bias toward beauty in photos and a new study has proven it to be true once again. The study, published online at The Royal Society Open Science, went a step further this time. It found that adding digital beauty filters to digital images of a person’s face helps them appear more beautiful to the viewer. This also has other benefits, such as helping a person appear more intelligent or trusting.
So, when you’re having your headshots made, is it wise to add a digital beauty filter? No, and there is one clear reason why you can’t do it for a headshot. But there are ways to improve your beauty in a real headshot to achieve the same benefits without resorting to digital filters.
Altered Faces Create Beauty in Photos but Remove Authenticity
The results of the study include dissecting how digital beauty filters apply complex transformations to a person’s face to dramatically alter their appearance. This goes beyond what typical makeup can achieve. These digital tools will transform a person’s entire face or just parts of it, or parts of it more than others. For example, they might widen the distance between your eyes, widen your cheek bones, enlarge your lips, and much more.
When these filters were applied to a person, the study found that when separately shown to study participants, they typically rated the altered face more beautiful, intelligent, and trustworthy. But this is precisely why you can’t do such alterations in a headshot. It’s one thing to apply these filters and show them to viewers that will never see you without them. However, this is not what happens with a professional headshot created with a photographer.
A professional headshot is typically used as a gateway to introduce a person before a real meeting. It’s often part of a profile. For an actor, it might be on their IMDB profile. For a business professional, it might be on their LinkedIn, or for someone else, it might be on their work chat profile.
In all these cases, ultimately, a real person will see the real you. It might be a casting director for an actor, a recruiter for a job applicant, or a client for a person’s work chat profile. If your headshot has an altered appearance so different from the real you, it can be disconcerting or unnerving to a person meeting you, whether face-to-face or on a video call. This is not how you make a good first impression.
So, how can a person go about improving their beauty to also come across more intelligent and trusting in their headshot without digital filters or AI applications? The good news is humans have been doing it for decades already.
Using Hair and Makeup Styling to Look Your Best in Headshots
The same study points out that the use of makeup has been demonstrated to reliably increase perceptions of attractiveness in a person. So, use real makeup. In most cases, people will anyway. A good idea is to hire a professional stylist. After all, getting a professional headshot created is an investment you usually only make every several years. It’s a good idea to do it as best as possible.
It’s also a good idea because people generally underestimate how much a headshot can impact opportunities for you. While it’s highly uncommon, a single headshot can make or break an opportunity for you all by itself. It can be the difference why a recruiter called you instead of the person that used a selfie on their LinkedIn.
So, consider working with a hair and makeup stylist. A good approach to how much styling to apply is to do so how you would to meet an important businessperson (client, casting director, etc.) on any given day.
What You Wear Can Also Impact How Your Professional Headshot is Perceived
Don’t forget about what you wear. While most headshots are from around the chest up, at the very least make strong considerations for what you’ll wear as a top. There are a lot of approaches you can take here. Probably the most common is to wear what you might on a typical business day. But you can go beyond this to propel how positively your headshot is perceived even more.
Another consideration you can make is to wear what you would if you were meeting with the most important businessperson in your business life. This would probably not be what you would wear on a typical business day. Yet another thought is to dress for the job you want, not the job you have. This can mean a lot of different things for different people, depending on where you are in your career track.
Tips to Showcase Beauty, Confidence, and More in Your Headshot
Making sure you are as attractive as possible in your headshots will begin with styling, from your hair and makeup to the clothes you wear. But it also will be necessary to use some posing tips. Science also tells us that people generally like symmetry in photos. So, be as symmetrical as possible.
When you pose for your headshot, don’t have imbalance in your eyes, nose, or mouth. What does this mean? With the eyes, it can mean to make sure the whites of your eyes show equal amounts on each side. Turning your head too much to one side and then looking back at the camera with just your eyes can create an imbalance here. The same can happen with your nose. If you turn it too much to one side, it can become imposing or the opposite of imposing. Try to keep it centered, though perfectly centered is not crucial. Also, smile evenly with your mouth. Try to make sure the one side of your mouth is equally smiling the same amount as your other side.
As for demonstrating other traits, like confidence, appear tall. Studies have also found that tall people are found to be more appealing than shorter people. The good thing with a headshot is whether you are five foot four or six foot four, you can appear taller with good posture.
Pop your chest out just a little bit and make sure your shoulders are both horizontal with the ground. Again, symmetry is important but not a total dealbreaker. Smile and maintain strong eye contact too. Everything is a balance. So, take care not to overdue any of it. It can be a fine line between demonstrating confidence and coming across egotistical. So, be careful. This is yet another reason why working with an experienced headshot photographer is important.
Remember, a headshot is a marketing tool unlike any other. People can stare at it – and other studies proven people do – for a long time. They can study your look and draw perceptions about you from it. So, make sure you look as attractive and authentic as possible because you are literally being judged by your headshot.
