Ahhhh, the good ol’ days…

I remember a time when all you needed was a good headshot. You would use that same picture on all media channels, business cards, your résumé, and every other piece of media your brand released. These days, not only is a headshot ineffective, you’ll be punished for overusing it… quite literally.

The ever elusive social media algorithm all the platforms we love employ, have pixel readers built in. They want to encourage the creation of original content, and therefore a picture that has been used more than once, including stock images, are tagged by the algorithm and pushed lower on the organic or suggested view chain.

The other thing that is out, is the overly posed portrait that makes you look like you belong on the back of a coin. People want authenticity, they want movement and your professional photographs should give the audience what they want, even if the thought of frequent photo shoots makes you cringe.

Toronto / Burlington photographer Maria Gagliardi created a solution to this dilemma. Her business partner, Daniela Siggia is a political and corporate strategist that manages communications and public relations.

What she was constantly begging of her clients was a variety of organic and action pictures, and all she would receive was the occasional selfie. Business and political leaders don’t have time to be sitting around taking pictures of themselves and this led to a big conflict. Some would hire traditional photographers that produced the boring headshot or profile picture which also limited the creative value these images could have in social media content creation.

There was nothing more frustrating for Daniela than having a client want a dynamic social media page, but not willing to do anything that would provide the content required to make an impact.