The Best Headshot Background Options
Not crazy about a studio background for your headshot, but you don’t have the time or budget for a location session around Detroit? What do you do?
In this post, I’ll share why you can’t go wrong with a simple option and what customizations are possible, if you want to venture out.
The Case for Simple Headshot Backgrounds
I believe that a simple background is always a good bet when it comes to your professional headshot, especially if it's your only image — something that you’ll only use on LinkedIn or your company website, for example.
In my studio in Troy, Michigan, I use simple, seamless background paper, maybe a different color too here and there. Sometimes I use the wall, which works pretty well, and sometimes I use elegant hand-painted backdrops from Oliphant Studios in NYC. All these options give a great, simple, polished look while keeping the focus exclusively on you, which is pretty much the job of a background in a headshot. It shouldn't be distracting.
The Challenges of Outdoor Headshots
If you’re saying, “That’s nice and all, but can we shoot outside?” The answer is yes, we can shoot outside. However, there are a few things to keep in mind. Outdoor setups can add a lot of cost and time to an otherwise pretty simple headshot session.
My professional clients tend to be pretty busy people — lawyers, doctors, accountants, consultants — and they’ve all got places to be and people to see, that sort of thing. So carving out a few hours on a specific date and time of day if you want the best light is tricky at best. And that doesn’t account for factors out of our control, like the weather.
From a business standpoint, blocking out time away from your clients is a lot of lost revenue. You can start to see why a studio session may make more sense.
Photoshopping Headshot Backgrounds
So maybe outdoors won’t work for you and you’re wondering if we can Photoshop the background instead. And yes, the answer is absolutely yes. I’m happy to offer a background swap option to my clients. This allows us to shoot in a comfortable studio space, with full control over the lighting and weather, then we replace the background later in Photoshop.
In addition to the simple convenience, a background swap adds consistency when shooting in different locations. So say you’ve got offices in multiple cities or multiple offices even in the same city. Replacing the background is a great way to keep everything super consistent across any of the offices.
So what backgrounds are possible? Well, as you probably know, there are a ton of stock images out there. I only use properly licensed images or images that I’ve shot myself. This keeps the legal department off your back and ensures that photographers are properly compensated. Artists have to eat.
Here are a few Photoshop background ideas
You could go with a good corporate office look.
Something with a little more dramatic lighting might make sense. This can still have kind of an office feel, but look a little more dramatic or edgy. This can work well for architects or builders, for example. Or say your work is done primarily outside. An environmental option with a little more green in the background can make a lot of sense. This can work well if you’re an arborist or environmental engineer, or maybe a yoga instructor.
If you have cool graphics or logos to incorporate, we can incorporate those.
Do You Need a Headshot Background? Actually, Maybe Not.
Another option to keep in mind is the idea of getting an image with no background. We call these transparent images, or transparent PNGs if you’re familiar with the file types. That’s a file or a picture with no background, so you’re just going to see the headshot in this case, and the background will be totally cut out.
It’s a super flexible format your marketing department or graphic designer will love. They can further customize the look with graphics and branding that are developed in the future, so it is kind of a future-proofed asset in a sense.
Is this process perfect? Are there any catches? It’s not 100% perfect. It’s pretty darn good most of the time, but there are some things to keep in mind.
It’s important that we take a little time upfront to plan and think about what the perfect background will look like. Then we can incorporate some of those elements into the photography itself. I’ll keep an eye on things like the lighting direction and the proper perspective. This will make the image a little more believable at a glance. Think about the perspective or still-life drawings that you remember from art class. This is where that all comes into play.
Photoshop is pretty good these days, but sometimes the extractions can be a little tricky. Say, for example, you come in with a white shirt, and we have to photograph you against a white wall. That’s going to be a little tricky for Photoshop to tell where the shirt starts and the background stops. An easy way to deal with that is to wear a coat or have wardrobe options when you come in.
So how do we get started?
Go ahead and book a session here. And if a background swap makes sense for you, be sure to select that option in the add-on section. Then I’ll be in touch to discuss the specifics of your shoot, including backgrounds. It’s a pretty typical headshot session from there.
So will you be sticking with the studio background or will you be swapping something out? Let me know in the comments, I’m curious to hear your thoughts.
