LinkedIn portraits
that work as
hard as you do—
in Cape Town.

How LinkedIn actually displays your photo

Worth understanding before the shoot, because the constraints shape what makes a strong LinkedIn portrait.

Profile photo. Circular crop, 400 x 400 pixels on most devices. Accepts up to 800 x 800 on upload. The crop is cosmetic — your full uploaded image is preserved, but only the centre circle is shown. This is why portraits framed too tight tend to lose the top of the head or chin to the crop, and portraits framed too loose make your face tiny in a sea of background.

Feed previews. When you appear in someone else's feed (a comment, a post share, a tagged article) the photo is usually shown at 48 x 48 pixels. That is small. Anything subtle in the photo disappears. Strong, simple lighting and clear contrast win at this size.

Search results. When a recruiter searches LinkedIn, your photo appears at about 100 x 100 pixels next to your name and headline. This is the second-most-viewed version of your photo after the profile page itself.

Cover photo. 1584 x 396 pixels. Often left as the LinkedIn default, which is a missed opportunity. We shoot wider frames during your session that work as covers if you want them.

Featured section. The first item under your About section. Can include a 1200 x 627 image. Useful for a portrait variant or behind-the-scenes shot from your shoot.

What recruiters and prospects look at first

Eye-tracking studies on LinkedIn profile pages consistently show the same scan pattern: profile photo first, headline second, current role third, then the About summary. The whole assessment takes around seven seconds.

In those seven seconds, the photo answers three questions: do they look like a real person, do they look like the kind of person I'd want to work with, do they look like they're in the role they say they're in. The first one is about photo quality — sharp focus, clear lighting, an actual human face you can read. The second is about expression and approachability. The third is about context — wardrobe, framing, energy.

Common red flags people don't realise they're sending. A holiday photo cropped to portrait. A wedding photo with a bit of someone else's shoulder visible. A selfie taken in a car. A heavily filtered photo that no longer looks like the person it represents. A photo that's clearly five to ten years old. None of these are about looking glamorous — they're about looking present, recent, and intentional.

The job of your LinkedIn photo is to look present, recent, and intentional.

Photo specs and exports we deliver

Every LinkedIn portrait session comes back with files sized for the most common uses:

• LinkedIn profile crop. Square at 1200 x 1200, well-centred so it survives the circular mask.
• Original full-frame. 4:5 portrait at 2000 x 2500, for About pages, board profiles, and conference programmes.
• Email signature. Square at 600 x 600, optimised for retina displays.
• Web. 1600 pixels on the long edge, RGB, sRGB profile, web-optimised.
• Print. Full resolution, CMYK on request, for board reports and printed materials.

Each image is delivered in colour and B&W. Files come in a private gallery you can download and share with anyone who needs them — your assistant, your firm's marketing person, the conference programme designer.

Updating LinkedIn after your shoot

Five minutes, end to end. Worth doing properly so the photo earns its keep.

1. Download the square crop (1200 x 1200) we send you.
2. Open LinkedIn on desktop. It works on mobile but desktop gives you a bigger preview of how it'll look.
3. Click your profile photo at the top of your profile, then "Add photo" or "Edit photo". Upload the square crop.
4. Adjust the circular preview if you want to fine-tune the crop. The default usually works because we frame for it.
5. Add filters or zoom. Don't. The photo is already finished. Filters undo the work.
6. Save.

Then a few extras:

• Cover photo (1584 x 396). If we shot a wider frame, upload it. This is the strip behind your profile photo.
• Featured section. A second portrait, or a behind-the-scenes shot, makes the section feel intentional rather than empty.
• Email signature. Replace the old photo. Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail all accept the 600 x 600 file directly.
• Conference and speaker bios. Same photo. Send the full-frame portrait when asked for a "high-resolution headshot".

A coordinated photo across all of these — same shoot, same look, slightly different crops — is what makes someone who looks at your LinkedIn, then your firm's About page, then your conference bio, register that it's the same person, presented intentionally.

What to wear, specifically for LinkedIn

The general wardrobe rules for corporate headshots apply, but a LinkedIn photo has one extra constraint: it has to read at 48 x 48 pixels in someone's feed.

Solid colours over patterns. Patterns get muddy at small sizes. A light pinstripe in person becomes a vibrating mess in a feed thumbnail.

Layers that hold their shape. A jacket adds structure. An open jacket over a t-shirt or open-collar shirt is an option. Pure shirt-only works but tends to read as "headshot from accounts" unless your industry is genuinely informal.

Skin-flattering colours. Navy, mid-blue, and charcoal sit well on most South African skin tones. Black is harder to light without losing detail. Mid-grey can look washed out.

Avoid logos. Even a small logo on a t-shirt becomes the focal point of a tiny avatar.

Glasses. If you wear them every day, keep them on. We can shoot a few without if you want the option. Anti-reflective coating helps a lot.

Smile, no smile, or both

The honest answer is both, but for different uses.

A warm, half-smile (mouth closed, slight crinkle at the eyes) is the all-purpose LinkedIn photo. Approachable without being grinning. Works for almost everyone in almost every industry.

A direct, more serious expression is for contexts where authority matters more than warmth — speaker bios at industry events, opinion pieces in trade press, About-the-firm photos for legal and financial services where the brief is "credible".

We shoot the range during your session and you decide which one is your main. Most clients keep the warm version as the LinkedIn profile and use the serious one for everything else. Some flip it — depends on what your network needs from you.