I have been asked by my publisher for some suggestions for images for my VLE book. I really struggle with this because a) I'm not a very visual kind of person and b) the IT/Educational Technology area doesn't really lend itself to photographs very easily.
I wrote a piece for the Times Higher once and they sent a photographer to my house to take a picture to accompany the piece. He was very disappointed when he turned up. 'Do you have a bank of computers?' he asked hopefully. I shook my head, indicating my sole laptop. We tried various poses - me grinning over the top of the screen, me looking pensive as I type, me cuddling up to the keyboard... well you get the idea. Needless to say none of them would have been candidates for the National Portrait Gallery, so in the end they just went with a (rather scary) close-up of my face. Which I think demonstrates the problem, even with a professional, experienced photographer, the best we could come up with was my mug.
Here is the cover of my last book - not bad, but there are only so many keyboard close-ups you can get away with. In the end I sent them a list of key words and concepts in the hope that someone there will be more adept at finding such images. Watch this space for the results.
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