My colleague Richard and I had a bit of fun on the blog a while ago talking about author photos. I wrote a post talking about how difficult it must be to come up with an appealing, natural author photo that isn’t cliched (ask Mary Roach for tips, if you like), and Richard weighed in on the ever-present hand-under-the-chin pose and wondered why anyone would do that. He also decided what his own author photo would look like:

If I ever made it as an author, I’d wear a beret (to show I am cosmopolitan) and be carrying a mop (to illustrate my kinship with the working classes.)

I was reminded of all of that upon finding this great infographic. I’ve seen many of these techniques in action on dustjackets over the years.