I’m Kim Hardy, a London-based headshot photographer working primarily with actors and performers.
I trained as an actor at Central School of Speech and Drama, and that background has shaped almost everything about the way I photograph people. I understand how strange it can feel to stand in front of a camera and somehow be expected to be yourself on command.
So I don’t really approach a headshot session as a series of poses.
For me, it’s about connection.
When something is real, we recognise it. There is a tiny difference between a photograph of somebody looking confident and a photograph in which you genuinely believe them. That’s the territory I’m interested in.
My job is to create an environment where you can stop thinking quite so much about the camera. We’ll talk, experiment, look at the images together and work out what feels truthful, useful and exciting. I’ll guide you throughout, but the process is collaborative — we’re making these photographs together.
And while authenticity matters enormously to me, I don’t believe your headshots have to be limited to a record of exactly who you happen to feel like on the day.
I think they can be a celebration of your future self.
The roles you haven’t played yet.
The rooms you haven’t walked into yet.
The version of you that is perhaps a little more certain, more ambitious, more playful, more dangerous, more vulnerable — whatever is genuinely there and deserves permission to come forward.
That’s not about pretending to be somebody you’re not.
It’s about recognising that a headshot will represent you before you’ve entered the room. For the months or years that you use it, it’s going to introduce you to people, suggest possibilities and quietly advocate for you.
I think that’s worth taking seriously.
Technically, I’m still an enormous photography geek. I love light, lenses, colour and all the tiny decisions that make an image feel effortless. But none of that matters if the person in the photograph disappears underneath it.
You should still be the most interesting thing in the picture.
My studio in Deptford is deliberately relaxed and unhurried. There’s room to try things, change direction, get something wrong, find something unexpected and occasionally make the photograph neither of us knew we were looking for.
Ultimately, I want you to leave with photographs that feel recognisably like you — but perhaps also remind you of everything you’re capable of becoming.
Not just a photograph of where you are.
A little evidence of where you could go next.
