Many clients send all their new staff members to my studio to make professional portrait photographs within days of starting. Since they are asked to work from home, it may be months before they meet their new colleagues face to face. It’s therefore vital that they have good, up-to-date portraits that can be used on the company intranet and website, for their Teams or Slack profiles, on Zoom or Webex, not to mention on LinkedIn and in their email signatures.

As more and more communication takes place online, the quality of our profile images is becoming ever more important. Who wants to present themselves as a faceless placeholder like the ones below? In this post, I’ll take a light-hearted look at some of the mistakes to avoid.

High-resolution

Gone are the days when a grainy 25kB profile image was the most that the platforms allowed. So show the world your smile in high-definition!

“What’s up with the Marketing Director? His profile image looks like it was taken in an airport photo booth in about 1980!”

The photographer should deliver an image file of at least 1000 x 1000 pixels, optimised for the web – that is, of not more than 250kB. Store this file safely as the master, then copy and resize it for each platform, using the maximum resolution allowed on that particular platform.

Keep it appropriate

Be certain to check and comply with any profile image guidelines issued by your employer – with regard to dress, for example. It’s also a good idea to take a look at the profiles of existing staff. You may want to express your personality, but you should probably avoid being the only member of the team who is seen raising a glass of piña colada in their profile picture.

“Whoa! I just got a call from Gary in accounts. Why does he have to show us so much chest hair?”

Consistency across platforms

Whether you’re a freelancer or work for a large organisation, growth in the number of platforms on which it’s necessary to maintain a profile shows no sign of slowing.

“Vanessa in sales has great profile pictures on all the platforms. But in some she’s blonde, in others brunette, and on Slack her hair is purple. It took me months to figure out they were all the same person.”

Make sure to get a really great portrait photograph that you love, and use it for all your profiles – at least, for all the professional ones.