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Pimp Your Photo: How to Win Freelance Gigs With a Smile

Pimp Your Photo: How to Win Freelance Gigs With a Smile

Does the thought of posing for a prim-and-proper professional photo make you feel like grinding your teeth?

Good news. Neither extreme close-ups nor cheesy “me at my desk” poses are necessary for you to win great gigs as a freelance writer.

But you do need some kind of photo to display on your website, your LinkedIn profile and so on — otherwise you’re nothing but a faceless silhouette in the online world. And faceless means forgettable.

Lucky for you, I spent a couple of years working as a photographic model before I became a freelance blogger. Here are some tricks of the trade to help you get a pro-looking photo without hiring a photographer or buying a fancy camera. 

Blogger on a budget? Don’t worry, none of these ideas require you to spend money.

Find Your Free Photographer

If you’ve ever looked up the prices of professional portrait photographers, you know they can be pretty damn expensive!

All that equipment and expertise makes a one-hour photo shoot a pricey proposition. But that’s OK, because you don’t need to hire a photographer to get a usable business portrait photo.

Option 1: Ask a Friend

If you know someone who takes clear, well-composed photos, ask them to help you out. It’s free (though you might have to reward them with cake or owe them a favour), it’s easy to organise, and you can always ask them to try again if you’re not keen on the first few shots.

Option 2: Ask a Photography Student

A lot of student photographers make a “time for photos” exchange with models: you both spend your time for free, and you both get copies of the resulting photos. Photography students have a trained eye, advanced equipment, and a desire to get great shots for their own portfolio, so they’ll probably give you better results than a quick point-and-snap session with a friend.

If there’s a likely source of photography students near you, for example a college offering photography courses or a local photography club, get in touch with them and ask if any students are interested in taking your business portrait on a time-for-photos basis. You may need to sign a model release form for the photographer, and it’s a good idea to have them sign a statement granting you permission to use the photos they take.

Find Your Free Gorgeousness

Even supermodels and movie stars have a metric shit-ton of ugly photos. They pick out the flattering shots and hide or delete the ones they hate. This is the true secret of getting a great photo: take hundreds and use only a handful of the best.

Aside from that, here are a few ways to make your photos look even better than the real thing:

Trick 1: The “Princess Di”

For an alert-eyed look, copy the way Princess Diana carried herself in photos and TV interviews. That means you hold your neck straight and keep your chin down so you’re looking slightly upward into the camera. It helps if you imagine a string attached to the crown of your head, pulling you up.

Avoid tucking your chin in too far, though, or you’ll suddenly have three of them. And try not to look brooding — if you’re peering at the camera through a layer of eyebrow, you’re probably overdoing it. 😉

Trick 2: The Squinch

OK, a squinch is when you narrow your eyes by moving only your lower eyelid, not your upper eyelid. This one works well even if you’re not smiling; it leaves you looking self-assured and is the perfect counterbalance to the wide-eyed “Princess Di”. Practice in the mirror before you give the squinch a try in front of a camera, because it’s easy to slide from a squinch to an unflattering squint.

Trick 3: The Bingo Wing Lift

I don’t know if there’s a colloquial term for this where you live, but here in the UK “bingo wings” are the soft flesh of your upper arms, especially your triceps (at the back of the upper arm).

If your arms touch your sides, the soft flesh on your arms gets flattened and widened by your body behind it. The bingo wing lift is simple: if your upper arms will be in the shot, hold them slightly away from your body so they don’t look weird and flat.

Find Your Free Short-Cuts

Still hate your photos? There are 3 easy ways to fast-track to a better-looking business portrait:

  1. Laugh out loud. Tell jokes, watch cats on YouTube, or whatever it takes to make you giggle. Then hold that thought, look straight into the camera, and click! You’re the friendly face your ideal client can imagine hiring.
  2. Turn a colour photo into a black-and-white. It’s arty, it’s understated, and it never clashes with the background colour no matter where you use it.
  3. Edit like crazy. Got red-eye? Stray hairs? Stress zits? A signpost in the background that looks like it’s growing out of your head? Photo editing software is your new best friend. Try Pixlr, a free online image editing app that includes tools for red-eye removal, spot healing and an airbrushed effect. Or enter the contest below. 🙂

Use the comments box to share a link to the photo of yourself that you use for business, and tell us what you do or don’t like about it. Or, if you don’t use any photos of yourself, tell us what’s holding you back!

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Comments

  3. I generally hate getting my photo taken, but my best friend and I did one last photo session together before we parted ways after college. I like it because it reminds me of that last, happy afternoon we had together. I’m not sure if I look too much like a little kid in it, but it’s one of the few photos of myself that I don’t despise, and that’s worth something, right? 🙂

  4. This post is a unique piece I don’t think I’ve seen written about this in-depth on another freelance site. And its suggestions DO work; a friend did my professional photos as a free photo shoot because she was needing more examples of portraits and professional headshots for her portfolio.

  5. I am not really photogenic and I think that is what scares me the most. I believe that you do not need to see what I look like its just about the job I can do. Guess I was wrong after reading this post

    • I hear you, Aisha. You might be surprised to hear that I’m not photogenic either! About 90% of my photos make me look like Mr Potato Head. 😀

      Your clients don’t need you to be a supermodel, but they do like to see your face –it helps them trust you and think of you as a person rather than a blog post vending machine.

  6. My current picture on Twitter and LinkedIn is terrible. I don’t think I’m going to break the camera but I don’t have any good businesslike pictures at present. I’m just recovering from a layoff; a good picture to use for a website and social media is one of my top priorities now.

  7. Hi Sophie,

    I’ve an old photo of mine uploaded on my social media pages.

    I created it by cutting my mug out from a group photo, clicked years ago, so obviously it’s low quality, low-resolution, low-everything.

    I’ve been meaning to get a better-quality photo but wasn’t sure how to go about it.

    Thanks for finally getting me to take action.

    Is there any way to improve the quality of this photo below and change the background to full red?

    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1003772327885&set=a.1512658409719.69726.1032158558&type=1&theater

    Thanks again, Sophie.

  8. Hi, Sophie, thanks for this reminder. I tend to take photos for granted. I like this one of me, however, because my wife caught me at a perfect moment. It’s soft and unassuming, while the tip of a tattoo showing on my shoulder suggests some creative depth. Even if I don’t win, I really would appreciate your opinion — and, for that matter, the opinions of all our gathered peers. Would anyone else care for loving, peer criticism? Thanks, Sophie.

    • Hi Roy, I like the pose your wife caught you in (and the tattoo!) but I feel obliged to point out that wearing sunglasses in a business photo isn’t ideal — people feel less inclined to trust you when they can’t see your eyes.

  9. I enjoyed reading your post. As a professional photographer, I photographed portraits for over 25 years. Now in my second phase in life as travel photographer and writer, I still come across subjects that don’t like their photos taken. Your post summed it up nicely.

  12. I like this photo of me because I’m smiling and it looks like “me.” (Does that make sense?) I don’t like that if you look closely enough you can see my husband sitting behind me- I feel like it’s unproffesional.

  14. Here’s the picture that I use most often: https://scontent-b-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/968839_569483693091518_571438996_n.jpg I like it because that’s the clearest my skin has been in ages and I look a bit older than I usually do (which helps me to be taken seriously). I don’t like it because I’m wearing my old glasses (which aren’t as awesome/flattering as my new ones) and because I’m standing in front of a closet surrounded by random junk.

    I’ll keep it around until I look that good again. So…forever probably. Hah! 😛

    The profile pic I have here on BAFB is of me wearing a brightly-colored hat…which makes it easy for me to scan through and find which posts I’ve replied to or not. (It’s also my profile pic for ReviewHat.com — a reviews website I co-own and write for sometimes).

    I’m not in the contest, I just wanted to share. 🙂 I really related to everyone’s “Well, this looks like me, but the background stinks” issues. I have them too!

  15. OK, this contest is now closed — the winner is Joy Collado. Congratulations, Joy! I’m emailing you now about your prize.

    For everyone else, I recommend Pixlr.com if you want to fix a couple of things about your photo. (I used Pixlr to create the image on my post for 25th December — take a look here to see what it can do.)

  16. Thanks so much for this post! I’m inspired to finally take my professional picture today.