I’ve noticed how reassuring it is, when writing to someone, to be able to picture their face. It can be nice to associate a writer’s image with their text, but it seems especially important when having a conversation by textual exchange. This came home to me the other day, when a contact “accidentally” replied to me using a signature that included his photo. It suddenly dawned upon me that people don’t only paste up their photo to bolster their own ego, but to encourage more familiarity with the people they work with, but never meet.
I suddenly realised that I could do with one of my own, and the first challenge was putting a name on what I wanted. Business Portrait did not lead me to many relevant articles, but Publicity Photo seemed to hit the spot.
As so often, once you scratch the surface you suddenly realise there is far more detail below you were not even aware of. So far my research has proven inconclusive, but I have far clearer ideas now. And although I don’t have all the answers, I do at least have a good range of sensible questions to ask myself 
Here are the links to resources that I think might be worth re-reading before I spring into the next step – amateur “oh my goodness, you can tell its been done by a friend” portrait photography…
http://www.writing-world.com/promotion/prphoto.shtml – helps you get the results you want by asking the question “what do you hope to acheive with the photograph”.
http://www.leadershipturn.com/how-to-get-great-casual-business-photographs/ – looks very promising, but the story is still unfolding
http://www.publicityhound.com/free_publicity/Articles/businessphoto.html – recommends using a professional but gives tips about preparing yourself for the session, and indirectly includes some does and don’ts for the actual shots.
http://www.susanwilsonphoto.com/Services/ – some nice examples that made me think more about what I did or didn’t want to acheive
http://www.ehow.com/how_304_portrait.html – very generic but has a few ideas
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[...] After reading through the tips I mentioned in my previous article (Better when you can put a face to the name) I had a few thoughts about what kind of photos I would like to be able to use, and came up with the following. Maybe a professional portrait photographer might be able to suggest something better but it is a starting point… [...]
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