Anatomy of an Author Photo: Die Hard Trivia Book

I do try to put careful consideration into which author photo goes on which book.

My author photo for The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles for example, was relatively easy. All I had to do was take a shot of me reading the book with a backdrop from the scene at LGA where Del Griffith (John Candy) and Neal Page (Steve Martin) first meet (at least officially).

So when I was creating my author photo for Yippee Ki-Yay Motherfucker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard I wanted to come up with something that would "speak" to the look and feel of the original Die Hard film, if not the franchise in general.

 Here's what I did for that shot.

1) I used fake blood/paint and splotches of grime onto an undershirt

2) I purchased a Baretta brand BB gun so that I could take the same stance that John McClane (Bruce Willis) takes on several of the more popular versions of the movie poster.

3) I splashed some water onto my face to denote sweat (and even added a few post-photo beads of sweat onto my face)

4) I purchased a Toronto city-scape piece of stock art as well as stock art of explosions and had explosions at the top of the CN Tower. (I figured why not make it a more local/Canadian backdrop since the author is Canadian). I also went with an orange colorized sky like in several of the movie posters. My attempts at creating a multi-colored sky ended up distracting too much from the buildings in the background, so I opted for a single shade of orange.

5) John McClane's skull in a top-hat tattoo isn't visible in the movie posters, and is only seen in fleeting glimpses throughout the movie. But it does appear in a few of the Die Hard 2 promo images. So I added that in.

6) John McClane isn't bald until the later films in the franchise, and he never had facial hair. But I wasn't about to shave or grow back my receding hairline for the photo. And besides, I'm a huge fan of Weird Al, and he's done plenty of parodies over the years without losing that trademark Weird Al mustache.

7) I thought the photo should be framed by something and so went with bits of broken glass, to call out that "Welcome to the Party, Pal!" scene from the film.

8) And though I didn't end up in the same pose as John McClane for the more popular movie posters, I felt that this shot of me (from the out-takes seen below) at least had enough of the trepidation in my eyes to convey something similar to the look Bruce Willis was conveying.

Here are a few of the out-takes from the photo shoot I did in my home office. (I used an Android S21 propped up on my standing desk with a 5 second time delay for the shots, and a small USB ring-light and of course, a green screen tacked in to the ceiling in front of my book cases). I took perhaps a dozen shots.

Putting together an author photo for a specific book can be a lot of fun.

Are you interested in venturing any guesses as to what I'll be doing for the author photo for my 2024 release of Merry Christmas! Shitter was Full! A Trivia Guide to National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation?