Photography Tips · Brussels

What If You Don’t Like Your LinkedIn Portrait — And Should You Wait for a Team Shoot?

By Dmytro Derkach · Brussels-based commercial photographer

Choose your frame on screen before the session ends, so you never leave with a portrait you have not approved. And if your employer already has a team shoot planned, here is how to decide whether to wait or book your own now.

Why "I might not like it" is the wrong fear

The usual worry about booking a LinkedIn portrait for yourself is not the price — it is ending up with a result you have to use anyway because someone else already paid for it. That fear disappears the moment approval happens before delivery rather than after: you see the frame on the screen during the session and choose it yourself, before the sitting ends. If nothing is working halfway through, that is the moment to change the setup, not a problem to discover a week later in an email attachment.

Your employer is planning a team session — wait or book now?

If the company-wide shoot is genuinely weeks away and the timing suits you, wait. It is the same product, and your portrait will sit consistently next to your colleagues' on the team page. Book your own instead if you need a current photograph before then — an interview, a promotion announcement, a conference bio — or if you want a portrait that stays yours when you change employer. Both reasons are legitimate; they are simply different reasons, and the honest answer depends on which one applies to you, not on which option looks more efficient on paper.

Whose name goes on the invoice

This is the practical difference from the version an employer books: the invoice can be issued to you personally or to your own company, decided at booking. Nobody else has to approve the image, and nobody else owns the files afterwards. If you leave your current employer, the portrait leaves with you.

What actually changes if you book it yourself

Retouching stays deliberately restrained either way — the person arriving at the meeting should be recognisably the person in the photograph, since a portrait that flatters beyond recognition creates a small disappointment at exactly the moment you want the opposite. What changes when you book directly is the process around it: no HR approval chain, no waiting for a company-wide date, and no explaining to anyone why you want a current photograph now rather than later.

A realistic market rate for an individually booked LinkedIn portrait session, delivered in the crop the platform actually uses plus a CV-ready file, typically falls between 200€ and 450€, depending on turnaround and the number of final files.