Everyone's a stylist

I had a lot of fun last night taking Ben's picture for his LibraryThing profile. We must have gone through about 20 different tries, modifying wardrobe and props for each one. The setting was a no-brainer -- in front of a bookshelf, preferably his most esoteric books. Props were a bit harder -- we started with a nice pedestal glass of beer, tried a couple different pipes, and ended up going the simpler route with none. Wardrobe, too, was modified -- we started with just a t-shirt (it's ThinkGeek's French Linux t-shirt, although you can't see it), but decided to add his blazer when we were pumping up the pomposity. Blazer and no pipe turned out strike the right chord.
Ben tends to squint when he is smiling, so after trying some different facial expressions we got this one -- a nice smoldering gaze.

It was fun!