I'm Ready for my Close-up, Mr. DeMille

My ebook is finally slated to come out. It's still not a FIRM date, so I'll hold off sharing until I know.

One move I've made to promote myself and my book is to guest on other blogs. Those other bloggers will inevitably ask me for my bio and a picture.

I'm not sure if I mentioned that my computer crashed last month, but I had to have the operating system reinstalled. Even though I backed up regularly, I still missed including a few things in the backup, like a decent photo of me.

Here is one I've been using. Notice that it's a bit blurry. It's cropped from a pretty good photo--pretty good for sharing with the grandmother who loves me! Many sites want a certain DPI (dots per inch).

One thing I discovered through research is that DPI shouldn't matter in this age of digital photography. A photo can be clear enough without worrying about 300 DPI. It's hard to convince the requester of this, sometimes.

My photography buddy said that you should be able to set the DPI on your camera before you take the picture. My camera doesn't have this option, but yours may.

Now the question arises--do I step out into my not-so-fabulous backyard and have the hubby snap pictures of me until I find one that I can live with? One without a desert rat scurrying across the wall for background color? Or do I have a professional picture taken?

Money is tight, so I'll have to forego a professional professional headshot--meaning someone who does headshots for a living. I can however check out the local JC Penny photo studio. It would definitely be one up from my backyard.

I did research online, and you can order a package that includes a disk of your photos. This is important, because you need to be able to email your photos to publishers, websites etc.

I've contacted the girl who does my hair. (At my age, 22 is a girl.) Unless you are very good with hair and makeup, it will be worth it to find someone to style you before your session. You want to look like a professional author, not like you're going to the grocery store in your best sweatpants.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

If anyone has other tips for getting a professional photo without going broke, please share your ideas in the comments section.

Here is the link for JC Penny Portrait Dept.

And just so you don't run into my computer problem, here are some online backup reviews from CNET.