Has anyone here had to submit an author photo? Any tips or thoughts as to what makes for a good one? Color? Black and white? Headshot? Full body? I don't consider myself to be all that photogenic. Can I just take a selfie and call it a day?
Even if you haven't had to submit an author photo, I'm open to any ideas you guys have on this. Thanks.
How's your camera? My tips would be: get a selfie stick, take the picture from slightly above, use soft natural light (not direct light), and have a simple background. It's worth seeing if you can accomplish a good pic like that. Go for a "bust" shot. Head and shoulders.
It depends what its for - my advice would be to go pro if you can afford it - a photoshoot for some decent head shots shouldn't cost much failing that most phones can take a decent selfie - try to use a fairly neutral background without a visible horizon
make sure your author photo is 300 dpi. I have had more than one problem because my photographer didn't use the right resolution. now I have to get them done again.
nah you can just resize them with photoshop - dpi is just a function of size anyway - a shot that's 72 dpi at one size can be 300dpi at a quarter of the size... most cameras output in 72ppi (technically its pixels per inch - its only dots per in when printed bu the difference is semantic) but so long as it was a reasonably large file in mb terms changing the resolution is easy. If you tell your photographer you want your shots in 300dpi he's likely to die laughing What matters is the pixel resolution of your file (ie xxxx px by xxxx pix) any modern DSLR and most phones are capable of creating an image much larger than you will ever need for the uses an author headshot is put to. (unless you become so successful that you are giving out autographed prints to adoring fans, or having your face displayed on bill boards) Also you only need a 300dpi file for print and these days 99% of the use of an author photo is online, for which lower resolution at a given size will be fine (72ppi used to be standard - for newer monitors its closer to 96)
Do what most author's do; use a photograph that was taken of you 10 years ago, and apply a dreamy Gaussian blur to it in Photoshop.
