What makes a great headshot for lawyers, doctors, academics & tech

A great headshot for a barrister looks completely different from a great headshot for a tech founder. The industry you work in has significant implications for what your professional portrait needs to communicate — and generic advice about headshots often fails because it ignores this. I photograph clients across a genuinely wide range of professions, and one of the first things I do in any consultation is talk through what the norms and expectations are in that specific field, because the same lighting, framing, and expression that reads as confident in one industry can read as stiff or out of place in another.

Law: Authority and Approachability in Balance

Legal professionals face a particular challenge: clients want to feel confident in their lawyer's ability — authority, seriousness, competence — but also comfortable enough to share sensitive personal information, which requires approachability, warmth, and trust. The headshot needs to hold both of these at once, and getting the balance wrong in either direction undermines the image's purpose. Dark, formal suiting in controlled studio light with a neutral background tends to work best for this balance, giving a sense of seriousness without tipping into coldness.

I generally avoid over-casual settings or overly relaxed expressions for barristers and senior solicitors, where the expectation of gravitas is strongest; associates and younger lawyers can carry a slightly warmer, more approachable expression without undermining their credibility, reflecting the more client-facing, relationship-building nature of that stage of a legal career.

Medicine and Healthcare: Trust Above All

Medical professionals — GPs, consultants, therapists, dentists — need headshots that communicate trustworthiness above everything else. Research consistently shows that patients form strong first impressions from photographs on practice websites, often before they have spoken to the person at all, and that first impression shapes how comfortable they feel walking into an appointment. A warm, genuine expression is more important than formal dress in this context; patients are looking for reassurance, not authority in the way a courtroom setting demands.

Location context can reinforce this message usefully — photographing in a practice setting, or against a clinical but not sterile backdrop, gives a sense of where and how someone practises. What I actively avoid for this group is anything that feels cold or distant; a headshot that looks clinical in the wrong sense, rather than reassuring, works against a medical professional's actual goals.

Academia: Intelligence Without Intimidation

University academics occupy an interesting middle ground — their headshots appear on department websites, speaker bios, academic papers, and grant applications, often across very different audiences within the same year. The image needs to communicate intellectual seriousness without being intimidating, which is a subtler brief than it sounds. A slightly relaxed pose, a natural setting — office bookshelf backgrounds work particularly well for this industry — and an expression that suggests engagement rather than formality tends to work best.

I generally avoid anything that looks too corporate for academic clients; a headshot styled like a management consultant's reads as inauthentic in an academic context, and clients in this field often specifically ask to avoid that look. The goal is closer to how a good colleague would describe you across a seminar table than how a stock photograph would describe "a professional."

Technology and Startups: Approachable Competence

Tech professionals — founders, engineers, product managers — work in an industry where authenticity is a cultural value, and this shows up directly in what makes a good headshot for this group. Highly formal or studio-stiff headshots can actually work against you in tech, reading as out of step with the culture rather than professional. Slightly more relaxed posing, lighter or brighter backgrounds, or genuine environmental context photographed at a desk or in an office space, and expressions that read as confident but genuinely warm tend to perform better on LinkedIn and company pages in this sector.

Suits are optional for this group, and smart casual is entirely appropriate — in fact, a founder photographed in a suit against a formal grey backdrop can sometimes read as slightly incongruous with the rest of a startup's branding, which tends to favour a more human, direct visual style throughout.

Creative Industries: Personality First

Clients working in creative fields — design, marketing, media, the arts — typically need their headshots to communicate personality and originality more than formality of any kind. A headshot that looks identical to a corporate lawyer's photograph works against a creative professional's brand rather than for it, because the whole point of the image is to signal a distinct point of view. I tend to introduce more variation into lighting, composition, and background for this group, and I am much more willing to depart from a purely neutral, centred, formal setup.

This does not mean abandoning professionalism altogether — a creative headshot still needs to look intentional and well made, not simply casual. The difference is that the definition of "polished" shifts: for a creative professional, polish often means a striking, well-composed, slightly unconventional image rather than a conventionally formal one.

Consulting and Finance: Confident and Polished

Consultants, investment professionals, and financial advisers are selling confidence and competence, and their headshots need to reflect that directly. Polished, controlled, professional — the expectations here are the most formal of any industry I photograph for. A dark suit, consistent studio lighting, and a neutral or slightly textured background are the standard, and departures from this formula tend to undercut rather than enhance the message this group needs to send.

The expression should read as capable and trustworthy rather than warm and casual; this is the segment where studio photography with fully controlled lighting almost always outperforms outdoor or environmental options, because the priority is consistency and polish rather than personality or context. This is a genuinely different brief from the tech or academic sessions I run in the same week, and part of my job is recognising which brief applies before the camera comes out.

Getting the Brief Right Before the Session

Whatever industry you work in, the most useful thing you can do before a session is come with a clear sense of who the image needs to speak to and where it will actually be seen — a company website, a speaker profile, a professional directory, printed materials for a conference. I ask about all of this in advance so that decisions about clothing, background, and expression are made deliberately, rather than defaulting to whatever feels generically "professional."

Timing within your career also matters. A headshot taken early in a role, before you have fully settled into it, sometimes lacks the ease and confidence that comes a little later on, once you are comfortable in the position. If you have flexibility over when to book, choosing a moment when you feel genuinely settled in your current role, rather than rushing to get something in place the week you start, tends to produce a more natural result.

A useful exercise before any session is to look at three or four headshots you genuinely admire from within your own industry and think about what specifically works in them — the lighting, the expression, the setting, the level of formality — rather than trying to describe a preference in the abstract. Bringing a few reference images to a consultation, even informally, makes it much easier to have a productive conversation about what will and will not suit your particular context.

It is also worth thinking about how your headshot needs to sit alongside colleagues in the same organisation. A single distinctive image can look wonderful on its own but slightly out of place next to a team of more conventionally styled headshots, so for anyone photographed as part of a wider group or department, some coordination on style and tone across the group is usually worth the extra conversation.

Whatever industry you work in, the underlying principle is the same: a headshot works when it matches what your specific audience needs to feel about you before they have met you in person. If you would like to talk through what that looks like for your field, get in touch and we can plan a session that fits.