The Results are In
The polls have closed and the people have spoken. Yeah, that’s you guys. At the beginning of last month, I sent an email to the subscribers of this site asking YOU to choose which headshot you like the best by taking a short survey. To my delight, the survey had an 85% completion rate which, according to my good friend Google, is amazing.
“A professional headshot in front of a bookshelf says you’re an intellectual. A professional headshot peeking through a bookshelf says you’re probably under a restraining order.”
― Ryan Lilly
A long, long, time ago, in Mid-February, I realized that I needed to get some professional headshots done. Headshots are required by most blogs if you want to submit a guest post and are pretty much required for all social media platforms and websites where you have a presence. As I’m not someone who’s comfortable in front of a camera I decided to reach out to a friend of mine who’s a professional photographer instead of picking a random photo studio based on their Yelp reviews.
The shoot itself was weird and awkward and yet still fun. I’m not a selfie-taker or someone who geeks the camera or Waldo’s every photo opportunity. So to have a zillion snaps of just me put me firmly outside of my comfort zone. Luckily, Ivy Green is a mage behind a camera. She can help get you out of your own head so that her camera can capture the many “you’s” that you are.
Ivy got the images back to me within a few days so then I had the task of whittling down the images to the final six. Which was way harder than I thought it would be. All of the photos were taken within a two-hour window on the same day, with the same hair and makeup but a few different outfits and several different backgrounds. And to me, there could have been about 14 different women having their picture taken.
I was blown away by just how differently she made me look via camera angles, background, lighting, and pose. And I realized that we, as writers, can do the same thing to our stories. The mood, feel, urgency, and purpose of a scene can be modified by Point of View (POV), exposition, word choice, and ultimately, which choices we set up for our characters. Just like my friend Ivy did, we have to decide how we want our scene or character or story perceived. Then we have to write and try to achieve the “look” we want.
Getting the survey completed is a whole other story which I’ll share in a different post.
“So which image won?” you ask.
Option two, by a whopping 68%. I found it interesting though that every picture in the array had at least one vote. And since you guys obviously have opinions, I’m now planning to send out additional surveys for other things that I’d like your feedback on. If you haven’t already done so, be sure to subscribe!
Have you had professional headshots taken? What was your experience?