In short
- Vertical, not landscape.
- At least 1600 pixels wide by 2000 tall. 2400 by 3000 is better.
- The original file off the camera or the phone. Never a copy saved from a website.
- Head and shoulders down to about mid chest, with room above your head.
- A plain, quiet background.
- Attached to the same email that carries your answers.
Orientation and size
The page crops your photograph to four wide by five tall, so a vertical photograph loses the least. A landscape photograph can be used, but nearly everything at the sides is discarded and what is left is usually too tight around the head.
Minimum 1600 pixels wide by 2000 tall. 2400 by 3000 or larger is comfortable. Send the file as it came off the camera or the phone. JPEG, HEIC and TIFF are all fine.
Do not send a screenshot, and do not send an image you saved from a website or a social profile. Those are already compressed and already cropped, and there is nothing left to recover.
If the file is larger than 25 MB, send a link rather than an attachment.
Framing and headroom
Head and shoulders, down to roughly mid chest. Your eyes sit about a third of the way down the frame.
Leave space. Space above your head, and space at both sides. The crop takes from the edges, and a photograph framed tightly has nothing to give. If the top of your head touches the top edge of the frame, the photograph cannot be used.
The background
Quiet and even in tone. A plain wall. A room deep enough that whatever is behind you falls out of focus and reads as texture rather than as objects.
Nothing directly behind your head. No doorway, window frame, lamp or shelf edge cutting across it.
A bookcase works if it is far enough back that the titles cannot be read. A conference room with a table, chairs and a screen does not.
Light
Soft, and coming from in front of you. Standing a few feet back from a window and facing it is enough.
Avoid overhead office lighting on its own, which drops shadow under the eyes. Avoid direct flash. Avoid strong sun, which puts hard shadows across the face.
What to wear
What you would wear to a first meeting with the kind of client this page is written for.
Solid colours photograph better than fine stripes or small checks, which shimmer on screen. Keep jewellery quiet. Nothing you have not worn before, and nothing you would not be content to be seen in for the next several years.
What must not be in frame
- Any logo, sign, backdrop or branded wall belonging to a firm, including one you have left.
- Another firm's name on anything at all.
- A court seal, a coat of arms, or anything that reads as an official endorsement.
- Another person, including part of a shoulder or an arm at the edge of the frame.
- Documents, screens or files with a name visible on them.
- An event badge or a lanyard.
When a photograph you already own will not work
- It was taken for a firm you have left and carries that firm's backdrop or its house retouching.
- It is landscape and framed so wide that cropping to four by five cuts into your chin.
- It is smaller than the minimum above.
- It was saved from a website, so it is soft at the edges and shows compression in the flat areas.
- It is a group photograph with someone cropped out at the edge.
- You would not be recognised from it immediately.
A new photograph is usually quicker than arguing with an old one. A local photographer does this in under an hour. A phone held by someone else, at chest height, a few feet back, in window light, beats a compromised file every time.
If your page includes the introduction video
Your portrait is taken at the video session. There is nothing to send in advance and nothing here you need to act on.
The videographer you engage takes stills in the same setup, in the same clothes and the same light, and you choose one.
How to send it
Attach the original file to the same email that carries your answers, or reply to that email with the file attached.
Do not paste the image into a document, a slide or the body of a message. That compresses it and there is no way back.
What happens to it
It is cropped to four wide by five tall and shown at the top of your page. Nothing else is done to it. It is not retouched, not recoloured, not restyled and not replaced.
If you want retouching, that happens between you and your photographer before you send the file.