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Picture yourself on the web.

Article Excerpt
A pal from my alma mater, Occidental College, has started using my quiet morning library as a place to do her script reading job. She is charming and brilliant; I am delighted to know her again. She pulled me aside one day to tell me the news. "There's an Oxy reunion happening on Facebook.com. You must join!"

That just shows how quickly the web changes. The last I knew, Facebook was restricted to university students. No more! Middle-aged persons are using it for all kinds of networking. Sure enough, I found some old actor friends there, along with colleagues from library school days.

As soon as I told my boy what I was doing, he jumped to sign on. It seems that his junior high school pals had already joined Facebook. Imagine, an internet librarian's son being so behind the times!

As I was merrily filling out the registration form, suddenly I was brought up short. Facebook has a graphical emphasis. It wants photos of its members, headshots, visual representations of the self to the world. How am I going to get a picture of myself? Should I ask my 13-year-old to do it? I can already imagine his snarky cracks--hardly likely to prove conducive to the relaxed, radiant smile that I must produce for this project. No. It looks like I'm going to have to take my own picture.

I Look Stupid: How to Take a Web Head Shot http://www.slate.com/id/2195142

Slate.com senior editor Michael Agger describes his quest to take a decent self-portrait. He quotes a scholarly study on beauty that argues, "The effects of facial attractiveness are robust and pandemic ... attractiveness is a significant advantage for both children and adults in almost every domain of judgment, treatment, and behavior we examined." Oh dear. Agger's solution? Capture a photo from a webcam and run it through a program to turn it into a cartoon. With luck, the effect will seem hipply ironic.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The Equipment

I own a Canon "point-and-shoot" compact digital camera that didn't cost more than $200. These...

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