Imagine a prospective patient doing research online to find a good medical provider (whether telemedicine or in-person). They come across your practice and several others, each with glowing reviews about the doctors and staff.

The element that sets you apart, though?

Looking through your practice’s website, they notice your poised, polished headshots, complete with a coordinated backdrop, solidifying your team’s professionalism and credibility. Those headshots might just be the deciding factor in attracting a new patient.

However, getting them done can be more work than you might expect. A medical headshot shoot involves additional tasks, such as:

Outlining white coat attire and poses
Curating a cohesive backdrop or background for cross-team headshots
Coordinating schedules with your photographer and your staff
Renting photography equipment
Working with the photographer through the editing and retouching process

Fortunately, we’ve dissected every stage of the process below to assist you in producing breathtaking, top-notch headshots for your team. This comprehensive guide addresses the planning, coordination, and cost and highlights real-life examples to help make your photo shoot successful.

Why Your Staff’s Headshots Are So Important

Administrative tasks are often the last thing on your list in a busy medical practice. With that in mind, investing in up-to-date headshots for your medical staff boasts a surprising amount of benefits:

Staff cohesion: Keeping a consistent look across your staff is paramount to presenting professionally. Having dignified and approachable yet polished medical headshots help your patient remain confident they’ll be cared for when working with anyone on your team.
Positive first impression: Any business revolving around people-facing roles like medicine understands the value of trust and care. Well-lit medical headshots showcasing your team’s smiles and personalities help patients develop a strong working relationship with your medical professionals from the get-go.
Effective branding: A consistent look across your website and social media boards like LinkedIn communicates your team’s commitment and dedication to your practice. From a practitioner standpoint, a great headshot can help you stand out on a medical residency application and get a foot in the door at your dream job.
Patient recognition: Patients might not always remember their physician or nurse’s name, but they do remember a face. Having up-to-date headshots helps patients build long-term relationships with people at your practice, allowing them to effectively request repeat visits with staffers who know and understand their history.

Planning a Medical Headshot Session

Putting together an entire medical headshot session can be quite a task, particularly if you handle all the coordination yourself. We’ll break down the ins and outs of coordinating a medical headshot session showcasing the traditional and modern paths you can take to get there.

Booking a Traditional Photographer [The Hard Way]

You can expect to take the following steps when booking a traditional medical headshot photo shoot:

1. Research and Book a Local Photographer

Start by finding a local professional photographer with experience shooting large teams, preferably with some medical headshot experience. You’ll need to comparison shop for the best photographer who can effectively handle the scope of your team, within budget, around a date of your choosing.

Most photographers book out weeks in advance, so you might have to delay your shoot depending on how proactive you are.

2. Coordinate a Prospective Shoot Day

After speaking with your photographer and agreeing on potential dates, take the shoot day possibilities to your team. Getting everyone together can be understandably challenging, especially when factoring in working with patients, so you may have to settle for a shoot outside of office hours and consider overtime pay.

Educate your team about appropriate attire before the shoot day, so they’ll be ready once they step on set.

3. Get Everyone to Show Up on Time and Properly Dressed on Shoot Day

It’s finally shoot day, and you must stress to your team members the importance of showing up on time, suitably dressed, and ready to pose accordingly. You only have your photographer for a set period, so time is of the essence.

The photographer will help direct your organization through several poses against your agreed-upon backdrop. Note that outdoor lighting conditions are subject to change, so it’s a good idea to have an indoor contingency plan if you plan an outdoor shoot.

4. Give Feedback through the Editing and Retouching Process

Your photos will likely need some editing and retouching to color correct and tame flyaway hairs, brighten teeth, or fix makeup mistakes. Every photographer has a different process, but you can expect it to take a few days to weeks to finish your photos and package them for your practice or hospital.

5. Put Your Headshots to Good Use

Finally, you’re ready to update your website with the headshots. Don’t forget to encourage your team to update social media sites like LinkedIn.

Hopefully, your new snaps meet all your expectations, and your entire staff set aside time for the shoot so you don’t have to schedule a reshoot or additional photo session.

Virtual Headshots [The Easy Way]

An alternative option to the traditional route, with a lot less hassle, is using a virtual headshot service like Headshots.com for your medical team’s headshots. This process is ideal for busy medical professionals who might not be able to set aside coordinated time with the rest of your staff for a shoot.

You can secure medical headshots even if you’re a geographically-dispersed staff or have several professionals working between branches of your practice or hospital. Our headshots are obtained 100% virtually. We manage every step of the process, so you won’t have to worry about booking conflicts or coaching your staff through a photo session.

Instead, getting medical headshots is simply a matter of your staff taking a couple of snaps on the phones they already have. We provide a seamless online portal to help direct the photo session and collect the images—all by your set due date.

Once the images are uploaded, our expert editors will retouch each photo by hand (never AI) and send them to you for review within 3 business days. We offer a Happiness Guarantee to ensure your virtual medical headshots exceed your expectations without ever stepping foot into a studio.

Our work speaks for itself. Take a look at some customer headshot examples created 100% virtually.

What Your Staff Should Wear

Having great headshots goes a long way, especially in medicine. Use these tips and tricks to help your hospital or practice staff put their best foot forward on shoot day.

Women’s Headshot Attire

Women’s medical headshots should showcase a professional, put-together appearance paired with a confident and approachable smile. We advise women to wear darker colors underneath a white coat or blazer, or they can dress in non-wrinkled scrubs.

Accessories like small earrings or a necklace can be a great way to showcase your personality, but they shouldn’t be a distraction from the main focus of the headshot—your smile! Stand up straight, and relax your shoulders.

Men’s Headshot Attire

Medical headshot attire for men should follow the tenants of traditional headshots while bearing in mind the light color of the white coat. Men should opt for dark, solid-colored shirts, with an occasional patterned tie nestled underneath a white coat or casual blazer. Scrubs work, too; just make sure there aren’t any visible wrinkles.

Present good posture, a friendly, confident smile, and keep a tidy appearance with combed hair and limited accessories. The photos should more or less represent what you look like on the job but with a sharp sheen.

Examples of How to Pose for Medical Headshots

Part of curating a great headshot is knowing how to pose. Here are some proven options your team can work with to spark inspiration.

Strong and Centered

Assure your patients with a confident yet approachable pose. Angle your shoulders slightly, with your face pointed directly at the camera. Finish off your look with your white coat and a smile, and you’re ready for your close-up!

The Relaxed Smile

A smile paired with the distinct white coat is a tried and true pose that does the trick. Have your staff stand with their arms crossed slightly and allow those pearly whites to shine.

Playful Yet Professional

Medical headshots can still showcase your team’s personality while maintaining professionalism. For these headshots, direct your team to take a relaxed stance where they can let their warm, friendly expression do the talking. Consider incorporating an accessory, similar backdrop, or matching outfit to create visual cohesion across your team.

Typical Cost of Medical Headshots

When pricing medical headshots for a traditional photo shoot, you have to factor in several items, such as equipment rental, studio space, the shooting session, and an additional fee for lighting and retouching.

Costs can vary by area and photographer, but it’s not unreasonable to expect to pay $100 to $500 per professional headshot, racking up to thousands of dollars for an entire team. Not to mention, planning a typical headshot shoot comes with plenty of opportunity costs when you tack on the time it takes to coordinate a photo shoot and precious hours away from patients.

By contrast, opting for a fully remote service like Headshots.com is more affordable, as it only costs $50 per finished picture and can drop to as low as $25 per picture, all edits included. Our team of experts guides your employees through the photo capture process and edits each photo by hand to align with your practice’s brand identity.

Your staff can then submit photos on their own time without taking hours away from their patients.

Approximate Price Paid per Finished Headshot

Traditional Photo Shoot*	Headshots.com
$100 to $500 per headshot	$25 to $50 per headshot

*Not including pre-planning or opportunity costs due to the logistics involved with a traditional photo shoot

Next Steps: Get Studio-Quality Medical Headshots with a Fraction of the Effort

Are you ready to get studio-quality medical headshots without investing in an arduous photo shoot? Find out more about our virtual headshot services here.

We handle the entire process from project management, directing poses, editing, and retouching, so you don’t have to lift a finger. Professional, custom-curated medical headshots for you or your team are only a few clicks away.

Medical Headshots: How to Plan, Costs, Examples & More