Professional Headshots for Men: The Full Commission, From Collar to Expression

Professional headshots for men succeed or fail on four things: a garment that fits at the collar and shoulders, a wardrobe register that matches your industry, grooming timed a few days ahead rather than the morning of, and an expression with some life in the eyes. The suit matters far less than whether it fits.

This is the full commission, start to finish. If you are looking for jaw position, stance and what to do with your hands, that is covered separately in our mirror-testable guide to headshot poses for men. This article handles everything that happens before you stand in front of the lens, plus the one expression problem that shows up more often in men's sessions than anywhere else. The counterpart for women, with its own research section, is our guide to professional headshots for women.

Choose a wardrobe register before you choose a garment

A headshot shows roughly the top third of your torso, so what you wear reads less as an outfit and more as a signal of register: how formal, how conventional, how senior. Decide which signal your industry and role expect first, then pick clothes that deliver it. Four registers cover almost every man's professional headshot.

Suit and tie

The most formal register. It still reads as the default in parts of law, banking, wealth management, government-facing consulting and some executive roles in traditional sectors. It signals conformity to a dress code, which is exactly the point when clients expect it. Outside those settings it can read as stiff or dated, particularly in tech, creative work and startups, where a tie in a profile photo can look like you dressed for someone else's industry.

Jacket, no tie

The most flexible register and the safest choice if you are unsure. A blazer or suit jacket over an open-collar shirt reads as professional without formality, and it works across sales, real estate, consulting, healthcare administration, finance outside the most conservative firms, and most senior roles in tech. The open collar does real work here: it keeps the neckline from looking cramped and softens the jacket's authority just enough to read as approachable.

Knitwear

A fine-gauge crewneck, a quarter-zip, or a merino sweater over a collared shirt. This register signals competence without hierarchy and suits product, engineering, design, education, nonprofits, research and therapy or coaching practices. Keep the knit fine: chunky cable knits add visual bulk at the shoulders and draw the eye away from your face. Solid, mid-to-dark tones photograph most cleanly.

Open collar, no jacket

A well-fitting button-up, polo or plain structured tee. It is the right call for founders in casual sectors, trades, fitness, hospitality, creators and many early-career profiles in informal industries. It is also the register with the least margin for error, because there is no jacket to hide a poor fit. If a suit is not something you own or would ever wear, this register done well will outperform a rented suit done badly.

If you are unsure where the line sits between these registers, our breakdown of business casual versus business professional draws it garment by garment. For color, pattern and fabric rules that apply to every headshot regardless of gender, see what to wear for a headshot; this piece will not repeat them beyond one reminder: solids and subtle textures beat tight stripes and small checks, which can shimmer on a sensor.

Fit is the highest-leverage variable, and the camera exaggerates every failure

An inexpensive jacket that fits will photograph better than an expensive one that does not. A headshot crops to exactly the zone where fit problems concentrate: neck, collar, shoulders and upper chest. Anything slightly off in person becomes obvious when it is framed, lit and enlarged on a screen. These are the specific failures to check in a mirror.

Collar gap

The back of a jacket collar should rest against the shirt collar. When it stands away, leaving a visible gap at the back or side of the neck, the jacket looks like it belongs to someone else. Tailoring guides commonly treat this as a sign of a size or posture-and-back-shape mismatch. In a three-quarter pose, a collar gap is often one of the first things a viewer notices after your face.

Shoulder seam past the shoulder

The jacket's shoulder seam should end at the edge of your natural shoulder. When it extends past, the fabric collapses into a dent at the top of the sleeve and your head can look small for the frame. Shoulders are also the hardest part of a jacket to alter, so if they are wrong, choose a different jacket rather than hoping a tailor can rescue it. A seam that sits too far inside causes the opposite problem: pulling across the upper back and sleeve head that shows as diagonal creases.

Sleeve length and cuff

Most headshots crop above the wrist, but many personal branding and team page photos show hands or forearms. The widely repeated tailoring rule is that a jacket sleeve should let about a quarter to half an inch of shirt cuff show. Sleeves that swallow the cuff make arms look short; sleeves that ride up show too much shirt and read as outgrown. If your photo will include arms folded or hands visible, check this.

Tie knot too small for the collar spread

The general principle among tie makers is that the knot should be in proportion to the collar: wider spreads want fuller knots, narrower point collars want smaller ones. A thin four-in-hand sitting inside a wide spread collar leaves exposed fabric either side of the knot, which looks under-dressed at headshot scale. A half-Windsor is the usual match for a spread collar, with a full Windsor reserved for very wide cutaways; keep the four-in-hand for point and button-down collars. Push the knot fully up so the collar closes around it without a gap at the top button.

Shirt collar that is too tight or too loose

A buttoned collar that is too tight pushes soft tissue over the band and adds apparent weight under the jaw. One that is too loose leaves the collar floating off the neck, which reads as sloppy even under a tie. The common rule of thumb is that you should be able to slide one or two fingers inside a buttoned collar. If you are between sizes and not wearing a tie, the open-collar register sidesteps the problem entirely.

• Stand side-on to a mirror in the jacket and look for daylight between jacket collar and shirt collar.
• Check that shoulder seams end where your shoulder bone ends, with no dent below.
• Button the jacket and look for an X-shaped pull across the front; if you see one, it is too tight for a seated or angled pose.
• Take a phone photo of your upper third, not a full-length one. That is the frame the camera will judge.

Grooming is about timing, not about the morning of

The most common grooming mistake in men's headshots is doing everything the day before or the same morning. Fresh cuts, fresh edges and freshly shaved skin all photograph differently from how you normally look, and a headshot is supposed to look like you on an ordinary good day. Build the plan backward from the shoot date.

Haircut: roughly three to seven days before

Photographer recommendations vary, from a couple of days out to a full week, but most cluster around the idea that a cut needs a few days to settle. A cut done in the previous day or two tends to sit too geometrically, with layers that have not relaxed and edges that read as just-left-the-barber. By about day five to seven, for most longer styles, the shape looks like your hair rather than a salon result. The exception is very short, tightly faded styles, where visible regrowth shows within days; for those, one to three days before is a common compromise. Either way, do not try a new style right before a shoot.

Beard and stubble

If you wear a beard, shape it a few days before so fresh lines soften, then tidy strays the night before. Keep the cheek line and neckline natural rather than carved: an aggressively high neckline can make the jaw look heavier, not sharper. For stubble, trim to your usual length the night before rather than the morning, which gives any razor redness time to fade. If you are clean-shaven, shave the night before or early enough on the day for irritation to settle, and consider whether a late-afternoon shoot will show shadow.

• 3-7 days out: haircut (1-3 days for tight fades).
• 3-5 days out: beard shape and neckline.
• Night before: tidy strays, trim stubble or shave, moisturize, sleep.
• Morning of: wash, light styling product, no heavy or glossy pomade.

Shine, and what a photographer actually does about it

Under studio light, skin oil shows as bright hotspots on the forehead, nose and, for men with shaved heads or thinning hair, the scalp. It is one of the most common reasons men's headshots look sweaty or tired. Experienced photographers deal with it in a predictable order: blot first with oil-absorbing papers, then press a small amount of translucent or mattifying powder onto the shiny areas if needed. Powder on unblotted oil tends to cake, so the order matters.

Many men are uncomfortable with the word powder. The practical reality is that a translucent product applied lightly is effectively invisible in the final image; it simply removes the reflection. A good photographer will have blotting papers on set and will stop between setups to check. If they do not, ask. Retouching can reduce shine afterward, but it is slower and less convincing than removing it before the shutter fires. Why some light sources create those hotspots and others do not is explained in our plain-English guide to headshot lighting.

Receding hairline or thinning hair: solve it with light and crop, not retouching

Retouching hair back into a photo is the fastest route to a headshot that does not look like you in person, and meeting someone who looks different from their profile photo costs more trust than any hairline. The honest fixes are optical. They reduce emphasis on the top of the head without changing what is there.

1. 1Avoid overhead and top-down light. Light from above lands on the scalp, shows through thinning areas and creates shadows that make hair look sparser. A large, diffused source at roughly face height is kinder.
2. 2Rethink the hair light. Many studio setups add a light behind and above the subject to separate hair from the background. On thinning hair it can shine through and highlight the scalp. Ask whether separation can come from lighting the background instead.
3. 3Crop into the top of the head. Many headshot photographers, Peter Hurley among them, routinely crop through the forehead or crown, which gives the eyes more of the frame and removes much of the hairline from the composition. Many men with receding hairlines prefer the result.
4. 4Keep the camera at or slightly above eye level, not far above. A high camera angle shows more of the top of the head. A modest height keeps the frame on your face.
5. 5Avoid a background close to your skin tone. On-camera styling advice for thinning or bald men specifically warns against it, because the edge of the head loses definition against a similar tone. Choose a background with some contrast.
6. 6Blot the scalp. Shine on the crown draws the eye straight to it. Treat it like the forehead.

If your head is fully shaved, the same rules apply with even more emphasis on shine control and on avoiding a single hard light that creates a bright hotspot. A clean shaved head, evenly lit, photographs as a deliberate choice, which is exactly how it should read.

Glasses: wear the frames you actually wear

If you wear glasses every day, wear them in your headshot. People who meet you will recognize you faster, and a profile photo without the frames you always wear creates a small mismatch. The problems glasses cause in photos are mechanical, which means they have mechanical fixes.

• Glare: the light reflects into the camera when lens, light and lens angle line up. Lifting the arms of the frames a few millimeters off your ears, so the lenses tilt slightly downward, or moving the light higher and to the side, usually clears it.
• Anti-reflective coating reduces the problem substantially; if you are due for new lenses anyway, get it before the shoot.
• Transition or photochromic lenses can darken under some lights, particularly outdoors or near windows. Bring a pair of clear lenses if you have one.
• Frame edges should not cut across the pupils. Thick top rims can shadow the eyes, so check the frame line in a test shot.

Our full guide to glasses in headshots covers glare angles and lens choices in more detail.

The expression problem: the flat neutral that reads as unfriendly

When men are nervous in front of a camera, the default is often a still, closed, neutral face. In a mirror it feels composed and serious. In a photo, where there is no voice, movement or context, the same face frequently reads as guarded, bored or mildly hostile. The fix is not to feel happier. It is a set of small muscular adjustments.

There is research behind the pattern, though it is easy to overstate. A 2003 meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin by LaFrance, Hecht and Paluck, pooling 448 effect sizes from 162 research reports, found that women and adolescent girls smile more than men and adolescent boys on average (d = 0.41), with the size of the difference varying by context, culture and age. It does not say men cannot smile convincingly; it says the default in many social settings differs. The authors also expected larger differences when situational constraints are ambiguous, and a camera session is exactly that kind of uncertain, self-conscious setting.

Mechanical fixes that work

1. 1Squinch. The technique popularized by headshot photographer Peter Hurley: pull the lower eyelids up slightly while the upper lids barely move. It removes the wide-eyed, startled look and reads as focused and confident. Subtle is the whole point; overdone, it becomes a squint.
2. 2Find the expression before the squinch. Settle somewhere between neutral and a small closed-mouth smile first, hold it, then add the squinch.
3. 3Unlock the jaw. Clenched molars flatten the cheeks and tighten the mouth. Let the teeth part slightly behind closed lips.
4. 4Breathe out just before the frame. Holding breath locks the face. A slow exhale through the mouth, then close it, resets tension.
5. 5Move between frames. Talk, laugh, look away and back. Expressions frozen for thirty seconds go dead; expressions arrived at freshly have life.

Whether to show teeth is a separate decision, and it depends on your role and the signal you want to send. Our guide on whether you should smile in a headshot walks through that choice and how to get a real smile rather than a posed one.

Posing, briefly

Posing matters, but it is its own topic and we have covered it in depth elsewhere. The short version for this article: angle the shoulders slightly away from the camera, bring the face back toward it, and push the forehead a little forward and down to define the jawline. It feels odd and looks right.

For stance, jaw extension, hand placement and a mirror routine you can practice before the session, use the men's poses guide linked at the top of this article. The two are written as companions: that article is the physical mechanics, this one is the preparation and wardrobe around them.

Age and career stage change the brief

A 24-year-old analyst and a 55-year-old partner are not commissioning the same photo, even if they sit in front of the same backdrop. What each needs to signal differs, and so do the practical concerns. Treat the photo as a statement about where you are and where you are going.

Early career (roughly 20s)

The goal is to look credible and ready, not older. Men early in their careers often overdress into a suit they rarely wear, and the result can look like a graduation photo. The jacket-no-tie or knitwear registers usually read as more natural. Fit matters even more here because first suits are often bought off the rack and unaltered. A warmer expression helps: at this stage you are signaling that you are easy to work with.

Mid-career (roughly 30s to 40s)

The photo needs to match the seniority you already hold and look like the person clients and colleagues meet. This is where outdated photos become a problem: a picture from a decade ago, with different hair or weight, creates a mismatch on video calls. Choose the register your peers at your level actually wear, and consider whether a slightly more authoritative expression suits client-facing work.

Senior and executive (roughly 50s and up)

At this stage the photo may appear on a firm website, a speaker page, a press release or an annual report, so it needs to hold up at larger sizes and in print. Light quality matters more because it controls how skin texture and lines render; broad, soft light is flattering without retouching. Resist heavy retouching that removes age, because people will meet you and the gap will be noticed. Gray hair and a lined face, well lit, read as experience.

Our guide to headshots by career stage goes further into how the brief changes for new grads, mid-career professionals and executives, including where each photo tends to be used.

Photographer or AI headshot: where each one fits

Everything above applies whether you book a studio or generate a headshot from selfies, but the two options handle it differently. A photographer can fix fit on the day, blot shine between frames, place lights around thinning hair and coach an expression in real time. That hands-on correction is genuinely hard to replace, especially for executive, press or print use.

AI headshot generators take a different route: you upload several selfies and the model produces a set of portraits in chosen outfits and backgrounds. That sidesteps the wardrobe and fit problem in a sense, since the clothing is generated, and it is quick and inexpensive to try. The trade-offs are real. Results can drift from your actual face, hairlines and beard shapes are sometimes altered, and the output is only as good as your input photos. Checking results against your real appearance before using one publicly is essential. SnapSuited, for example, produces 50+ headshots from a few selfies in about 10 minutes and is free to try, with payment only for HD downloads.

The one-week checklist

Headshot preparation mostly fails on sequencing rather than effort. Run this list from a week out and the day itself becomes about expression, which is where your attention should be. Adjust the haircut timing if you wear a very short fade, and leave extra days if a tailor is involved.

1. 17 days out: decide the register for your industry and role; try on the options and photograph your upper third in a mirror.
2. 23-7 days out: haircut (1-3 days for tight fades), and take any jacket that needs alterations to a tailor as early as possible.
3. 33-5 days out: beard shape and neckline; confirm glasses have clean, ideally anti-reflective lenses.
4. 42 days out: steam or press shirts; check collar size buttoned; choose the tie knot to match the collar spread.
5. 5Night before: trim stubble or shave, tidy beard strays, pack blotting papers, sleep properly.
6. 6Day of: light, matte styling product; blot before every setup; practice the squinch in the mirror; bring a second shirt in a different register.