What makes a good mugshot ?
May 4, 2011 3:38 PM Subscribe
What makes a good mugshots/avatars for social media ? Hivemind give me your guidelines
I see a lot of mugshots on twitter, facebook, blogs etc. Some are good, some are bad.
Tell me what you'd advise when producing a photograph to identify yourself for these purposes. I work in software/electronics and I'm interested in projecting a professional image but often in areas where a suit and tie would look a bit off.
Here are some ideas but I'd be interested in views about any aspect of these types of photographs.
Smile / No-smile ? (I often seem smiles beside ranting blog posts - seems a bit odd)
Background ?
Colour / Black + White (I think B+W may be friendly to oldies ... like me !)
Closeup ? (How close)
I see a lot of mugshots on twitter, facebook, blogs etc. Some are good, some are bad.
Tell me what you'd advise when producing a photograph to identify yourself for these purposes. I work in software/electronics and I'm interested in projecting a professional image but often in areas where a suit and tie would look a bit off.
Here are some ideas but I'd be interested in views about any aspect of these types of photographs.
Smile / No-smile ? (I often seem smiles beside ranting blog posts - seems a bit odd)
Background ?
Colour / Black + White (I think B+W may be friendly to oldies ... like me !)
Closeup ? (How close)
The people at OKCupid have some detailed articles about this. They're aimed at dating, of course, but most of their non-breasts-and-abs advice still applies. It comes down to: take it with a quality camera, don't use the flash, take your photo outside in the late afternoon, and try to get a shallow depth of field (i.e. focus it so that you look crisp but the background looks blurry). Smiles don't matter much; interesting content (doing something that isn't just standing there looking at the camera) helps.
They also have MyBestFace, which will tell you which was the best (and, more helpfully, what kind of people thought it was the best) if you upload a few pics.
posted by vorfeed at 4:20 PM on May 4, 2011 [2 favorites]
They also have MyBestFace, which will tell you which was the best (and, more helpfully, what kind of people thought it was the best) if you upload a few pics.
posted by vorfeed at 4:20 PM on May 4, 2011 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Thanks to both of you for your answers, liked the practical tips from wackybrit and the research from OKCupid was eyebrow raising !
posted by southof40 at 3:15 PM on May 8, 2011
posted by southof40 at 3:15 PM on May 8, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
On cropping, "closer than you think." Typically your avatar will work out to 48x48 (or 72x72) and you need to crop really tight to get a good effect (assuming you'll be using your real face - I recommend this). I've found that actually producing a 96x96 PNG myself and ensuring it's crisp, etc, produces good results since it gets precisely scaled down 50% for the 48x48 version so you retain the crispness. If you did it at 72x72, the conversion is not as good.
The good thing about a tight crop is that very little (or no) clothing gets included so that issue goes out of the window. In my case, I wear blue glasses so these form the main part of my identity on Twitter, but you might have something else about your "look" that makes it seem both non-generic but not off-putting.
I also generally "cut out" my head and place it on a plain background. This doesn't make a significant appearance in the final avatar but the cleaner edge is still there in areas and it seems to take away a lot of the grubbiness I've seen in some avatars.
posted by wackybrit at 4:14 PM on May 4, 2011