Web Author's Guide
Your Photo

Most pictures by which current scholars are content to be known are simply unacceptable. You thus cannot safely learn manners by observing practice. Here are some guidelines in lieu of good practice.

Face

Your picture represents you to the future. It should preserve you, and it should show a decent respect for the field, both present and future.

• Pictures from particular occasions are not quite the thing. They will do to illustrate stages in your career for a full biography, but not as the sole surviving picture of you.
• The pince-nez intimidation style is gone, and unlamented. But don't make the opposite mistake. Pictures of you boozing, fishing, or holding cats, are not in the proper tone.
• Smile if you like, and if it suits your face, but don't grin. If you prefer a serious mien, be sure it doesn't come across as a grumpy disposition.
• Don't wear fussy clothes, sport gaudy jewelry, show cleavage, or display bodily mutilations. Don't do anything else that will associate you with the Trobriand Islands.

Background

You are the point of the picture. Not something else. Therefore:

• Avoid busy backgrounds. Woods, clouds, the family philodendron, other people, will have to be cropped out by posterity's editor, who will curse you at every stroke. With reason.
• It is hard to portray intellectual activity; no one has ever succeeded. A picture of you against your books is a popular solution. But frankly, it looks like a lawyer's office.
• The human is not yet born who is not easily upstaged by even a third-rate piece of calligraphy in the background. Resist the temptation.
• If you use the sky as a backdrop, avoid gray days, and avoid too sharp shadows. Avoid flash. You want a natural nondirectional light, the artist's "north light."

General

The photo editor at the local paper would like us to add:

• Color has more impact, but a good black and white photo is just fine. If you do have a monochrome photo, don't tint it sepia. Let it stand.
• High resolution is vital. Fuzzy, blurred, or overenlarged photos look awful: as though the only record of you was a secret police shot, snapped through a keyhole.
• Hold the camera straight. Show all your face. In general, eschew drama. Media celebrities can do things which are out of place for the sitdown professions.
• But good angles are better than bad ones. A straight-on photo may be less effective than a one-quarter shot, with you looking down (as though reading) or elsewhere.

Give the whole thing some thought, and then implement the thought. By next Thursday.

28 Jan 2006/ Contact The Project / Exit to Reference Page