Soon-to-be Author - C&C Appreciated

manaheim · Jul 30, 2008

This is my first portrait shoot. A friend of mine is about to have her first book published. It's a mystery/suspense/thriller. She needs a picture of herself for the book, as well as for her website and various PR needs. Needless to say, I was excited to take up the job.

Let me know what you think. I have a few more shots that are interesting, but I wanted to start with just a few.

== 1 ==

== 2 ==

== 3 ==

Thanks for looking!

tirediron · Jul 30, 2008

Hmmm, #3 is my favorite, however I'm not sure it would be suitable for a bookjacket print. #2 says "Highschool librarian" to me rather than authoress. #1 would be my pick, but I'm not fond of the background, (Just a nice soft "wall" of green would work better, the road is a little distracting) nor the fact that she's looking away from the camera.
Have considered doing some genere-appropriate pictures? Say the in sort of Sherlock Holmes attire or in a cemetary or something of that nature? Not sure if it would work or not.

Just my $00.02 worth - your milage may vary.

~John

bethanyb · Jul 31, 2008

Three is my favorite, but I'm also not sure how well it would translate to a smaller bookjacket format. You might want to consider just a very simple headshot-- head and shoulders so that it could be reproduced small without losing any detail. That doesn't mean that it has to be completely boring, though-- this particular author headshot has stayed with me for a long time, despite just including the torso and up: http://www.rolfpotts.com/pictures/writers/shah.gif

manaheim · Jul 31, 2008

tirediron said:
Hmmm, #3 is my favorite, however I'm not sure it would be suitable for a bookjacket print. #2 says "Highschool librarian" to me rather than authoress. #1 would be my pick, but I'm not fond of the background, (Just a nice soft "wall" of green would work better, the road is a little distracting) nor the fact that she's looking away from the camera.
Have considered doing some genere-appropriate pictures? Say the in sort of Sherlock Holmes attire or in a cemetary or something of that nature? Not sure if it would work or not.

Just my $00.02 worth - your milage may vary.

~John

Good point on the HS librarian one. I hadn't considered that. I hate the color in that shot, anyway... stupid library had horrible light.

On the shot with the road- she wanted pictures of her in her "garden", but to be honest her garden was kind of a train wreck. That was the best area in her yard that visually would look good as a backdrop, which unfortunately happened to have the road in it. Too bad, too, I think that's a great picture of her.

The idea of the third shot was to get somewhat genre-appropriate. (note the knife) Her book is somewhat all over the map on genres, blending all kinds of random stuff together, so it was hard to hit on something that would work well. I've been racking my brain on it... it's a great suggestion, I'm just kinda stuck as to how to do it.

bethanyb said:
Three is my favorite, but I'm also not sure how well it would translate to a smaller bookjacket format. You might want to consider just a very simple headshot-- head and shoulders so that it could be reproduced small without losing any detail. That doesn't mean that it has to be completely boring, though-- this particular author headshot has stayed with me for a long time, despite just including the torso and up: http://www.rolfpotts.com/pictures/writers/shah.gif

My hope was that if they needed that they could crop it out of some of the original images, but I haven't actually played with that as of yet. They're 12MP so there's a lot of room to crop.

Worst case I can go shoot it again.

Thanks to both of you for the comments! Some great points and some things to consider more as I go to do this again.

motorshooter · Jul 31, 2008

#3 looks the best, however; I do think its too dark for a book jacket

scubabear6 · Jul 31, 2008

I like 1 the best for a book jacket. 3 is great if it wasn't so dark and a women with a knife in her hand scares me.

Dmitri · Jul 31, 2008

Got to agree with everyone. I think #3 would have been much better if the knife thing was a bit more subtle. I like the idea, but it screams "hey look, a knife!"