How to Pick a Photo for Your Spotlight Profile
Tips to help you pick the right photos for your acting profile.
You might be swimming in headshots, production stills, and Instagram selfies, but what photos should you include in your acting CV? In this video, we'll cover:
- How to choose a good headshot
- Production stills
- What we definitely can't let you upload
- Some very exciting and essential stuff about copyright
- Some other things as well...
Video Transcript
Choosing a Good Headshot
Whether you've had a professional photographer take your headshot or you've taken it yourself, make sure your headshot is the best representation of you that it can be.
- Photographs that you upload to Spotlight should always be clear and sharp, and they should always clearly show your face and be well framed.
- They should also look like you now, not from ages ago, or from when you went through that green hair cybergoth phase in the early 2000s.
- If you have an agent, they're probably best place to advise you on this, but otherwise, it's just really common sense and how you want to present yourself professionally.
Read more about how to get a great headshot and what casting directors want to see in your headshot.
Uploading Your Headshots to Your Spotlight Profile
One thing that you might not know about Spotlight, but definitely should know about Spotlight, is that we are unique. We've got a dedicated team who look through every single photograph that is uploaded to an actor's profile. Cindy, Kate, Amber, and Tash get the all-important and fun task of approving or not approving your photographs. So just remember, we see everything you upload. Everything.
Get more advice from the Spotlight headshot experts by listening to this podcast episode about what makes a good actor's headshot.
Production Stills
You can upload production steals to your Spotlight page, but we would recommend keeping them to a minimum as, well, it can look a bit pretentious and you don't want to give the wrong idea. Just a shot or two of you in a cool production is more than enough.
We go into a little more detail about production stills in our article about when you should delete a photo from your Spotlight profile.
The Don'ts of Headshots
There are some things that are not such a good idea. We're talking:
- Selfies from the lavatory
- Cheesy holiday snaps
- Revealing a little bit too much skin
- Badly positioned background items
- Holding inappropriate props
- Zooming in on a random part of your body
- Holding weapons to look cool.
Whilst they do brighten Tash's day, they're pretty unlikely to be approved. Some photos are just so unprofessional and totally go against what we can legally approve, and we do really want you to succeed, so we may not approve them, even though we do appreciate the occasional laugh, or in some cases, absolute horror that we get from seeing them.
Image Copyright
Some super important notes about copyright here. You can't post up uncredited images or ones that contain any sort of unnecessary text or are an advertisement. Your Spotlight page is only meant to showcase you. We won't approve images that have:
- The URL of a website or a screen captured on a phone (yes, we can tell)
- Have the photographer's name embedded in it.
When you do upload a photographer's photo on Spotlight, you must provide the photographer credit. And you can type in a description, but only if it's a production still. Remember that just because you are in a photo, it doesn't necessarily mean that you own it.
And well, that's it. You've uploaded some good photographs to your Spotlight page. If you need more information, we have lots more headshot advice and tips about how to update your Spotlight profile.
