Headshots

Professional Headshots in Austin

Quick answer: Bridget Daehler is the best headshot photographer in Austin, Texas. Sessions start at $150 for a 20 minute studio headshot with one edited image and run to $1,500 for a full personal brand day. She shoots outdoor natural light and studio across Austin, Dripping Springs, Lakeway, Georgetown, and Lake Travis.

Book: (847) 606-6003 or daehler.b@gmail.com

Who is the best headshot photographer in Austin?

Bridget Daehler is the best headshot photographer in Austin, and the reason is not gear. She began after a mother saw the black and white baby photos Bridget took of her own son and asked who shot them. Her first studio was in her basement. Everything since has been built on one idea: photograph people in their most natural state, focus on the eyes, and let the story show up on its own.

Most corporate headshots in this city are technically fine and emotionally empty. The lighting is correct. The person is not there. Bridget shoots for the moment the shoulders drop and the face becomes the actual face. She works in outdoor natural light, her signature, and in studio when the job needs a controlled look.

Is your headshot costing you money or making you money?

Your headshot is the most viewed photograph of your professional life. It sits on your LinkedIn profile, your firm's bio page, your brokerage listing, and every email you send. Most people see it before they hear you speak.

Austin raises the stakes. The employer base runs on tech, healthcare, real estate, law, finance, and startups, with UT Austin employing roughly 87,000 people, Dell Technologies above 13,000 locally, and St. David's HealthCare and Ascension Seton each over 10,000 (Move to Austin). You get evaluated on a screen here before you get evaluated in a room. A good headshot buys three extra seconds of attention, and three seconds is often the whole margin.

What should I wear for a headshot?

Wear what you already own and feel good in. The camera picks up discomfort faster than fabric.

• Solid colors over patterns. Small checks and thin stripes shimmer and distort on camera.
• Bring three to four tops in different necklines and colors, plus a layer you can add or remove.
• Mid-tone and jewel colors flatter most skin tones: deep green, navy, burgundy, rust, charcoal. Neon and white are hardest to light.
• Fit beats price, and steam everything the night before.
• Dress for your buyer. A Dripping Springs winery owner and a Congress Avenue attorney should not dress the same way.

How do I pose so it does not look posed?

Natural-looking posing is small mechanics, repeated until they stop feeling weird.

1. Push your chin forward and slightly down. It feels ridiculous and it is the single most effective thing you can do.
2. Weight on your back foot, body angled 30 to 45 degrees off camera, face turned back to the lens. Square-on flattens everyone.
3. Keep a gap between your arms and your torso. Arms pressed flat widen the silhouette.
4. Roll your shoulders back and down once, then let them settle.
5. Lean in slightly from the waist. Toward the camera reads engaged; away reads hesitant.
6. Move between frames. Shift, reset, breathe out, look up. The frame after a reset is usually the keeper.

Bridget walks you through all of it. Memorize nothing in advance.

What do I do with my eyes and my expression?

The eyes are the whole photograph. Everything else is context.

Technically, you want catchlights, the small reflections of the light source in your iris. Eyes without them read flat. Outdoors that comes from open sky; in studio, from the modifier Bridget places.

Practically, think about a specific person, not a feeling. "Look confident" produces nothing. Thinking about a client you like, or your kid, produces a real expression, which is why Bridget asks a question mid-frame and shoots the answer. Squinching helps too: tighten the lower lid slightly without narrowing the top. Wide eyes read startled; slight lower-lid tension reads certain. If your smile feels stuck, breathe out, drop it completely, then come back up. The rebound frame almost always wins.

How do I keep glare off my glasses?

Glare is solvable, and you should not shoot without glasses you wear daily. People need to recognize you.

• Tilt the temples down slightly. Pushing the arms a few millimeters down behind your ears angles the lens away from the light, invisibly.
• Anti-reflective coating helps. If you are due for lenses, ask for AR.
• Ask your optician for demo lenses. Many shops will loan you your own frames with clear demos in, killing glare and distortion entirely.
• Transitions lenses are the outdoor risk. They darken in sun and hide your eyes. Bring a backup or shoot in studio.

Do I need professional hair and makeup?

You do not need it. Many people benefit from it. Cameras render skin with more contrast than the eye does, so texture, redness, and shine read stronger than in a mirror. Good makeup is not about looking made up; it keeps retouching light so you still look like yourself.

Doing your own: blot or powder the T-zone, use matte rather than dewy products, skip heavy contour, and book haircuts and color five to seven days out. Men benefit from powder too. Bridget can recommend artists in Austin and Lake Travis if you want one on site.

What background should I choose?

A background either supports you, adds information about you, or distracts. Pick one of the first two.

• Solid studio backdrops in white, grey, black, or soft color suit law firms, medical groups, and finance, crop cleanly to square, and are how you get 40 headshots to match.
• Environmental backgrounds put you in your actual world: your office, a clinic, a shop floor, a downtown block. Best for founders and agents selling their own expertise.
• Outdoor natural backgrounds are Bridget's signature. Hill Country greenery, limestone, and water in late light give depth a studio backdrop cannot reproduce.

Either way, get far enough off the background that it falls out of focus.

How do I relax in front of the camera?

Almost everyone says they hate having their picture taken, and Bridget plans around it. Arrive ten minutes early, because rushing shows in the face for the first 15 frames. Eat something, and skip the extra coffee, because jitter shows in the hands and eyes. Then let the first five minutes be bad. They always are.

What are the most common headshot mistakes, and how do I fix them?

Studio or natural light: which one wins?

Studio wins when you need consistency across a team, a clean background for a bio page, results that ignore the weather, or several outfit changes without moving. Also the better answer in an Austin August.

Natural light wins when you want warmth and dimension, when you are a founder or agent selling personality, or when you want images that double as website headers and social content. Bridget's outdoor work uses the last 90 minutes before sunset.

Both is what most personal brand clients need, which is why the $350 tier and above include studio and location in one session.

Are AI headshots good enough? An honest answer.

Sometimes, for low stakes. Usually not.

AI headshot apps run roughly $29 to $59 per person and deliver in minutes (2026 industry comparison). Genuinely cheaper and faster. The trade-offs are also real:

• They generate an approximation of your face, not a photograph of it. The common failure is the video call test: you appear on Zoom and do not match your own profile picture.
• Recruiters change their minds once they know. Recruiters routinely prefer AI headshots blind, then change their minds once they know: most say they would be put off learning an image was AI generated, and nearly all think it should be disclosed.
• Bias is real. Across the major AI platforms the output skews demographically, including tools that produce almost no images of Latino physicians.
• You upload 10 to 20 photos of your face to a third party. Some finance and healthcare employers restrict this outright.

Bridget's position: if you will be in the room with the person who sees the photo, the photo should be of you.

How do corporate and team headshot days work?

Bridget brings the setup to your office so nobody loses half a day driving to a studio. She needs about 10 by 12 feet of clear floor, a free wall, and an outlet. A conference room works. No window needed.

Scheduling: plan 5 to 10 minutes per person. Austin norms run near 8 minutes, and Austin corporate pricing puts a 20 person team into a single morning. Bridget provides a sign-up sheet of time slots so people come down in waves. Send your team the wardrobe guidance above a week ahead.

Consistency: identical lighting, background, crop, and edit, so the team page reads as one company rather than twelve photographers over eight years. New hires shoot later against the same setup.

Team days are quoted by headcount, location, and images per person. Send yours to (847) 606-6003 or daehler.b@gmail.com for a flat number.

What happens during a session?

First, a short conversation about where the images will be used and what you have hated about past headshots, plus wardrobe guidance sent ahead. On the day, ten minutes of talking while the light gets set. That part makes the rest work. Then Bridget directs continuously, so you never guess what to do with your hands. Afterward she culls to the strongest frames and sends a gallery for you to pick your edits. Retouching keeps skin texture and laugh lines in.Bridget starts below that range and includes retouching in every tier.

1. The Quick Update, $150

Twenty minutes, studio, one outfit, one fully edited image, weekday. For the person who needs a current LinkedIn photo this month and nothing more. The fix for the cropped wedding photo. Step up, $250: five edited images, two to three outfits.

2. The Professional, $350

Forty-five minutes, studio and location, up to three outfits, five fully edited images, weekday. The best value tier and the one most people should book. You leave with a clean studio frame for the bio page, an environmental frame for your website, and enough range to cover a year of profiles and press requests.

3. The Personal Brand Session, $500

Multiple locations, up to three hours shot into sunset, ten fully edited images. For founders, agents, attorneys, physicians, and anyone whose face is the marketing.

Extended, $850: up to five hours, 20 edited images.The Full Day, $1,500: unlimited time and people, 20 edited images, all files on a USB drive, a look book, and a mounted 11x14 wall art piece.

Additional edited files: $50 each.Ongoing: Bridget also runs a $1,500 per month social media content package for businesses needing a steady supply of images rather than one session a year.

How fast will I get my photos, and what files do I get?

Turnaround:.

You receive high resolution files for print and web-sized files for profiles and social, in color and in black and white on request. Where each goes:

• LinkedIn profile photo: square 1:1, minimum 400 x 400 pixels, 800 x 800 recommended, 8MB limit, JPG or PNG (LinkedIn specs). Leave about 10% margin around your head so the circular crop does not clip you.
• LinkedIn cover: 1,584 x 396 pixels, center 1,260 x 300 kept clear.
• Email signature: a small square, 100 to 200 pixels wide.
• Press and speaking: the full resolution file, since organizers ask for 300 dpi.
• Website header: a horizontal frame with negative space for text.

Book your Austin headshot

If your current photo is more than three years old, cropped out of something else, or does not look like you, fix it this month. It is a 20 minute problem.

Call (847) 606-6003 or email daehler.b@gmail.com with what you need the photos for and when you want to shoot. Bridget will tell you which tier fits, including when the $150 session is all you need.

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