Architectural & Interior Design Photography, Corporate Commercial Photography, Advertising & Portrait Photographer | Ottawa | 613-558-7585 | justin.vanleeuwen@gmail.com
It’s hard to escape the need for a good professional portrait or headshot these days. Between social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or whatever else the kids are using these days an avatar that isn’t a heavily cropped cell-phone shot of your drunk with an ex boyfriend or girlfriend (you know the one I’m talking about) is pretty essential. Even if you don’t use your profiles professionally, or maybe you do but choose to be a little lax with your character (reference: my twitter stream). It’s certainly a self-fulfilling mission for me to say you need a professional photographer to take your portrait, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be me. There are loads of great photographers in Ottawa or wherever you live that are capable of taking that headshot. Maybe you have a friend who shoots for fun and they need a subject to beef up their portfolio, maybe you’ve been eyeing the work of a talented local and thought “one day, I’ll get one of those.”
What are you waiting for? Seriously. Everyone’s looking at that silly cropped photo, out of focus, maybe even 5 years old, and they’re judging you. After all, passing silent (or not-so-silent) judgement on others is one of the Internets strengths. Don’t you sometimes patrol Facebook clicking around to see what so-and-so is doing in their profile photo? Are they having fun, how good do they look? Now imagine that a prospective job hinges on this. No matter what industry you’re in, someone’s going to be Googling your name when you apply for a job or if you’re being considered as a contractor for hire. Maybe you can try it out yourself. Type in your name and see what kind of images pop up. Lucky for me, as a photographer, a lot of the images with my names attached are photographs I shot.
Now I’m cool with pretty much any sort of image of me that’s out there. I don’t embarrass easily and often make weird images of myself for fun. That’s me, and that’s what I do, are you comfortable with the image you’re putting on display for the world and what it says about you? Whether you want it to or not, the world is watching.