Should I pay for professional portrait photos?

Your LinkedIn photo and CV headshot are doing work before anyone reads a word you've written. A clear, current, well-lit photo signals that you take the process seriously. This is one of the cheapest, fastest things you can do to improve how you come across on paper — see the packages for what a session actually gets you.

Your face is on your website's about page, your proposals, your email signature, maybe your invoices. Clients are deciding whether to trust you with money before they've met you. A flat, badly lit phone photo undercuts that; a proper portrait doesn't need to be flashy, it just needs to look like you took your own business seriously enough to get it done properly.

If your face is going to appear next to your name repeatedly — posts, comments, speaker bios, quotes in articles — it's worth being a photo you're not embarrassed by and that actually looks like you. This is less about one big impression and more about not undermining yourself every single time you show up.

A friend needs a photo for a leaving card, a quick profile picture for a hobby forum, a one-time thing with no real stakes. A phone photo in decent light is genuinely fine. Don't spend money solving a problem that doesn't exist yet.

If you're choosing between a headshot and rent, the headshot loses, obviously. A well-lit phone photo against a plain wall, taken by someone else so it isn't an arm's-length selfie, will do a reasonable job in the meantime. When money allows, the £100 Budget Headshot is built for exactly this gap — a real photo without the studio cost.

Not every internal use needs a professional photo. A casual Slack avatar or an internal team page where the whole culture is informal doesn't need the same investment as a client-facing website. Match the spend to what the photo is actually for.