{"id":2824,"date":"2026-06-03T17:19:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T01:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/?p=2824"},"modified":"2026-06-03T17:19:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T01:19:24","slug":"the-headshot-dilemma-and-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/52.34.185.155\/index.php\/2026\/06\/03\/the-headshot-dilemma-and-update\/","title":{"rendered":"The Headshot Dilemma and Update"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Professional headshots always feel like such a hassle. I’m never fully satisfied with professionally done ones, yet I feel like I should be, because I love every other kind of professional photo shoots. But with my career headshots there’s always a stilted weirdness going on. And at-home always feel too micro-managed, I’m trying to control every aspect of them and then spiraling too far into funky territory. And I don’t want it to look like I’m trying too hard, or not hard enough. And it has to have the right feel for my specific niche within my specific field. Do I want to look like I vibe with Gen Z or should I embrace my elder millennial-ness, or do I need to pretend I’m more stoic to woo Gen X and the baby boomers? But the photo I was using was definitely outdated and it needed a refresh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet I kept putting it off, even though these days, smart phone cameras are absolutely mental, and the professional photographer that did the last shot I was happy with over six years ago, agreed to do a work swap for a quick session. I DON’T WANNA energy. All this to say, writers, I hope you are better at this than I am, I can’t imagine the kind of pressure you feel about your headshots that are actually going into physical books. And you definitely need a professional, as you’ll want multiple variations to put on different sites\/books\/interviews, so you have to find someone who will not make you feel stilted. Or maybe we all just get real angsty about it but pretend we don’t? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something happened to push me to just get the headshot done, after three years of waffling about it. A fun update:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It’s been a long road to this, as my spouse and I decided for some reason to space out our two children by six years, the first when I just started agenting, the second right before I joined a new agency, but I am proud to say I’m at last a Senior Agent! My incredible clients are the reason I’m here, so I hope anyone reading this blog will go check out a few of the books that recently came out like Fate’s Bane<\/a><\/em>, Saltcrop<\/a>, The People’s Library<\/a><\/em>, Daughter of the Cursed Kingdom<\/a><\/em>, Japanese Gothic<\/a><\/em>, or Auntie Q’s Golden Claws Nail Salon<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And finally, for that long-awaited submissions update. Speaking of evolving technology, I am currently trying to work out how I want to approach the AI-generated subs situation, so will remain closed until I can navigate that thoughtfully. I definitely only want human-generated stories, but I also want to pay attention to the nuances of the conversation about the big thing that is happening all around us. I’m working through the final subs I have from the last round, I’m down to less than 20, and would like to read and respond to those before I reopen as well. Again, thank you for your incredible patience with that. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professional headshots always feel like such a hassle. I’m never fully satisfied with professionally done ones, yet I feel like I should be, because I love every other kind of professional photo shoots. But with my career headshots there’s always a stilted weirdness going on. And at-home always feel too…<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Announcement, I'm now a Senior Agent!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[109,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agent-life","category-submissions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/52.34.185.155\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_1825.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6esjn-Jy","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/52.34.185.155\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/52.34.185.155\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/52.34.185.155\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/52.34.185.155\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/52.34.185.155\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2824"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/52.34.185.155\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2829,"href":"http:\/\/52.34.185.155\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2824\/revisions\/2829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/52.34.185.155\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/52.34.185.155\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/52.34.185.155\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/52.34.185.155\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}