There are as many philosophies on this as there are headshot photographers it seems, but I will tell you a story: once upon a time, I was working with a model client that was doing a great job until she asked to see the back of my camera.
She saw an image that she didn’t care for and said ‘hmmmm’. The shoot went from calm and relaxed to nervous and tense, as she began asking to see the back of the camera every other shot.
Up until that point, the shoot went fantastic and she ended up loving the images (ironically, including the headshot she was initially disapproving of), The images after that were alright from a technical standpoint, but there was some lost magic. Where everything felt organic and natural before this, the expressions felt more forced after this and the poses were more intentional and stiff.
The moral of the story is: don’t psych yourself out. When you look at a headshot on a 3 inch camera LCD or even an unedited raw on a preview monitor, don’t judge the shoot by that one photo. Instead, trust me and just enjoy the shoot. We’ll go over the images afterwards and if you feel that they don’t quite hit the mark, we’ll take some additional images.