My Headshot Is a Cropped Photo of Me Eating Pastries
Look at the photo next to this paragraph. It’s the one I use on LinkedIn. The one that’s supposed to make me look professional and trustworthy. Here is what you can’t see. Just outside the frame, in both of my hands, are two pastel de nata. Portuguese custard tarts. My favorite pastry to eat anywhere in the world.
I didn’t plan it that way. My wife took the photo at a Portuguese cafe in Hamburg, Germany. I was happy because I was about to eat something delicious. The light was good. I cropped out the pastries because I thought a headshot should just be a face. But I have been thinking about that crop lately. What else am I cropping out?
The Pressure to Look Professional
Every freelancer hears the same advice. Get a professional headshot. Wear a blazer. Stand in front of a neutral background. Look trustworthy but approachable. Smile but not too much.
I tried. I really did. I asked a friend to take photos of me in a button-down shirt. I stood by a window. I practiced my "competent but friendly" expression. The photos were fine. They looked like me but not like me. They looked like someone applying for a job they did not really want.
The pastel de nata photo is different. I wasn’t trying to look professional. I was just happy.
The Other Photos You See
On my homepage, the photos tell a different story. One is me drinking tea in Suzhou. Another is me shopping at a market in Phuket. No headshots. No blazers. Just me, in places that aren’t my home, looking curious.
Those photos are not accidental. I chose them because they’re honest. I spend a lot of time in places where I don’t speak the language. I spend a lot of time figuring things out. I spend a lot of time being the foreigner. That’s what my work looks like too. Reading a brief that is missing context. Editing a sentence written by someone who learned English from a textbook. Finding the clearest path through confusion.
The tea in Suzhou and the market in Phuket are meant as evidence of who I am, not as planned branding or imaging.
What You Can’t See
When you look at my cropped headshot on LinkedIn or my About page, you see a face. That’s it. But if I uncropped it, you would see two things.
First, the pastries. Golden brown. Flaky. Dusted with cinnamon and powdered sugar. The kind of pastry that makes you close your eyes when you take the first bite. Second, the context. I was in Hamburg, miles from Portugal, and I had found something that reminded me of everywhere I had ever been happy.
That’s who I am. I’m the person who finds pastel de nata in unexpected places. I’m the person who takes a photo instead of just eating them. I’m the person who uses that photo everywhere because it’s more honest than any blazer-and-window shot I ever took.
What This Has to Do With Writing
I have a theory. The best writers don’t crop out the weird parts. They leave them in. The detail about the pastries makes me look more human, not more professional. And humans trust humans more than they trust professionals.
When I edit your copy, I’m looking for the details you almost cropped out. The weird sentence that actually says something true. The awkward phrase that is specific to you. The thing you almost deleted because you thought no one would care. Those are the pastel de nata. They’re the best part. Do not crop them.
What You Will Find Here
You won’t find a lot of corporate jargon on this site. You won’t find stock photos of people shaking hands in front of a whiteboard. You won’t find the version of me that I think you want to see.
You will find me drinking tea in Suzhou. You will find me shopping in a market in Phuket. You will find a photo of a hand with a Vonnegut tattoo. You will find a travel timeline that is just a list of countries and years. You will find a blog post about a two-word tattoo on my collarbone. You will also find a headshot that is cropped just enough to hide the pastries, but not enough to hide the fact that I was happy when someone took it.
That’s the version of me you are hiring. The one who eats pastries. The one who reads weird novels. The one who has been the foreigner long enough to know that "professional" is overrated and "human" is underrated.
The Uncropped Version
If you want to work with someone who looks like every other headshot on LinkedIn, I’m not your guy. If you want to work with someone who actually writes, reads, travels, and thinks about words the way other people think about breathing, send me a message.
I will reply. Maybe with a photo of something weird. And I will leave it uncropped.
What you’ve really been waiting for is all the photos of me eating pastel de nata around the world:
