Author Photo

Last week I received an email from my agent. The last draft of my novel "Gabriel's Songbook" works for him, so he's preparing a list of publishers to approach. He asked if I could send him stuff like a CD to show that I have some musical credentials--the novel features a songwriter whose music is surprisingly much like mine. Reviews of performances and such will also help, he said. And he asked for a picture, which caught me a little by surprise. I've seen pictures of authors on book jackets, but I wasn't expecting to need to send a picture along with manuscript submissions to publishers.

Because of the content of the novel, he asked if I had any pictures of myself in a C&W outfit. I promptly wrote back to say that the closest I could--or would--get to that was to wear something from my bolo tie collection. He wrote back to say that was fine but suggested that my guitar be somehow in the picture. Okay, I responded, that I could do.

I've seen the pictures of authors that appear either on dust jackets or on the back covers of paperbacks. They're rarely that good in comparison with publicity photos of recording artists or actors. They most often seem like decent quality candid shots that maybe a husband or wife took. The background sometimes has to do with the content of the novel, but often it's just something obscure or something literary like a wall of books. Okay, I'm thinking, that I could do.

But a couple of agent blogs have me second-guessing myself. See, for example,

http://www.bigbadbookblog.com/2006/09/07/how-to-make-the-camera-love-you-author-photos/,

which says to hire a real photographer for this kind of thing. The problem is that I don't have the money to do that, so I have to give it a go on my own. A mistake? Probably!

Anyway, I tried to get a good photo tonight . . . and failed. Not that the pictures themselves are completely bad. I kind of like this one, for example. Although it's posed, it doesn't strike me as stiff. The bolo tie is there, and I like the guitar in the background. All that works for me--as a basic concept, at least. But my lack of attention to detail, my inability to think about the shot in a holistic way that extends beyond me, the tie and the guitar, hurts the picture. Why, for example, didn't I think to move the hooded sweatshirt off the back of my chair? And why is that globe growing out of the back of my head?


This is Leesa's favorite of me (from this batch of self-portraits). She likes my expression, the bolo tie and the fact that my earring is somewhat visible. But she pointed out that the picture as a whole has a number of problems. First, the guitar looks better in my arms than it does as just a neck sticking up from the bottom edge of the frame. Worse than that, the background is a mess. The cork board and its various hangings might be nice in a photo framed differently. Then there's the clutter on top of the piano. I feel certain that a real photographer could compose a shot that would make these messy elements work in some interesting way, but I'm not a real photographer.

So, we like the tie and the shirt. We like the piano in the background. We like the guitar in the arms. We apparently like the left side of my head. Tomorrow night, we'll try again, with Leesa framing the pictures live this time (instead of my using the timed delay) and both of us trying to be aware of the shot as a whole, not just aware of me. I'm not going for a Glamour Shots product here, but I'd like to get it better. We'll see what happens.


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