It’s been a sad state of affairs that someone who perpetrates to be in as many social media tools, toys, and sites as I do had no decent picture of myself, or “avatar” to use. Partly because most pictures of me look ridiculous (in my opinion), and partly because I never got around to correcting the situation, the end result was that on most sites I was represented by whatever silly default icon they used.

So when some cohorts in the Arizona Twitterverse started focusing on their avatars, I got curious. A local photographer, Tyson Crosbie, shot a session with Ms. Herr and posted the top 15 pictures online for people to view and vote which three they liked the best. I was curious, intrigued even, and set up my own shoot with Tyson.

The shoot was a blast, as was seeing the resulting pictures. It confirmed my belief that there is an innate screwball inside my skin that shows up crystal clear on film. We still found 15 good shots, which Tyson put on Flickr, and the voting began.

What a bizarre few days it was as people commented. I just do NOT like looking at pictures of myself, and here was a whole herd of them! I was like a ornithophobe at Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room. Not good. The comments ended up being insightful, supportive, and quite funny. Aside from a few pictures picking up nicknames like “the fart one”, it was far less painful than I feared.

End result – I have three good pictures of myself to use online, although they weren’t the ones I would have chosen for myself. To me, that was one of the best parts of the process because I had an image that appealed to others and not to my own view of myself.

	This picture is definitely the most animated of the bunch, and though it is perhaps a bit “Fonzie” it has some energy and fun in it that I was hoping to capture in at least one of the avatars,
	I was told this was both the “best smile” in the bunch, and also it “looked like I just let a fart.” Oddly (perhaps sadly) both of those do seem to apply, so I went with it. This one will likely be used for most of my corporate avatars, as I see no reason why business can’t have a smile in it once in a while.
	My wife laughed for a good five minutes at this one, as did a lot of others. I don’t quite see it, but that’s part of the point. This was the overall winner and is my new avatar on Twitter, Flickr, and elsewhere.

It was a fun and educational process, and Tyson was great to work with. You may want to read Tyson’s thoughts on your avatar being part of your online brand, and you definitely should check out his other pictures on Flickr. Ms Herr also posted her final thoughts about the process.

Thanks to everyone who helped me select this pictures, because we’re both stuck looking at them for a long time to come!