A great music teacher picture will help to attract potential students to your profile and help reassure them that you are professional and friendly. Musical Performance shots should be reserved for the media section of your profile and not be your main profile picture. For your headshot, keep it business and standard with the option of including a part of your instrument in the shot.
Best Profile Picture Qualities
- Clear, in-focus image
- Warm, smiling face
- Well lit, with light sources of one colour temperature.
- Both eyes looking at the camera
- The background is simple, not distracting
- Rule of thirds, general eyes are ⅓ from the top.
What camera to use:
Any modern smartphone, or point-and-shoot camera, will take excellent pictures for our needs. If you have a DSLR, use it, but if you don’t, use what gear you have, and use it right. When using a DSLR with the standard 18-55mm lens, set the lens to 50mm and frame your shot from there.
Examples of good profile photos:
- Simple pose
- Well-light with one light source
- Smiling face
- Simple background
- Eyes about ⅓ from the top.
Another good profile photo
- Simple pose
- Easy background. (Sometimes we may remove the background with software)
- Smiling face
- No glare from photo flash in the eyeglasses
These are simple photos taken at home with the camera they already had available. Professional headshots are great and are a worthwhile investment for every musician to have in our media kit. If you have them, use them, but if not, photos like the above will do well. Basically, we want good composition, pose, focus, lighting and exposure. Think like a professional photographer, when using whatever tools you currently have.
We recommend you have someone else take your photo, to get the best composition and distance. If no one else is around to do this, then we suggest using either a selfie stick or placing the camera on a stand and using the timer function. The camera lens should be around 1.5 meters away from your face, or more, to get a good picture without closeup lens distortion. Handheld selfies look bad because they distort the face. Get that 1.5-meter distance.
This is a good profile photo from a professional photo shoot. The teacher seems friendly, happy, and approachable, and the closer crop also shows a bit of the guitar, but not too much. The focus should be on the face.
Generally, looking at the camera is a winning move, however, there are exceptions when you have a photographer taking photos of you.
This is from a posed photoshoot, and it works well. Well lit, good pose, a friendly smile, nice background that is interesting but blurred to be non-distracting. Not looking at the camera works well here.
Here is another example of a professional profile photo where the subject is not looking at the camera. He is giving a smile that exudes warmth and friendliness.
Examples of some bad music teacher pictures:
Poor Composition
- Bad composition with the microphone grabbing the center frame.
- Music gear is distracting from the person
- Facial pose is not good.
That image was replaced with this one
- Much better pose, smile, and eye contact.
- Lighting is improved
- No distracting music gear in front of him
- The background is blurred. (We could also remove it with software but chose not to)
Messy Backgrounds
This well a posed and framed picture but with a distracting background.
Here it is with the background removed.
It is now a better music teacher picture.
Removing Backgrounds
To remove the background yourself, this webpage makes it easy.
A different background can now also be placed in if so desired.
Not a Profile Picture
This is a good media picture of a musician playing but is not a great music teacher picture.
We replaced it with this photo instead, which better serves the needs of a profile photo.
Same issue here. The initially submitted music teacher picture is better suited to the media section of photos. We asked for a more suitable profile photo and got it.
Here is a discarded profile photo taken by a photographer, from the same photo shoot as the good picture above.
This is a poor profile photo because of the facial expression. (The person seems to be waiting for the photographer to click something?). That facial expression conveys tiredness, impatience, and unpreparedness, and does not convey welcoming warmth or openness. Technical aspects of the photo are important, but the human aspect is more important. The good photo is earlier in the article, here.
Where to find a photographer for your music-teacher picture
If you are in the Montreal area and want a good music teacher picture made at a low cost, that you can use anywhere in your career, feel free to contact Alan Guillot.
Conclusion
Once you have a good-quality music teacher picture, you will be all set to apply for the best music teacher jobs and be in a better position to attract students for lessons.
About the author:
Elijah is a university-educated drummer with extensive experience for both teaching and musical performance. Since completing his Bachelo of Music degree at Concordia University in 2010, he has played music across each province in Canada and in more than 20 countries around the world. He is also the founder of Musiprof, a platform that connects music teachers with students across Canada.
