Hobby photos on a dev portfolio: when they help and when they don't
I considered a 추억-style photo gallery on /about. Decided against. Kept a small slot for conference/maker/workspace shots only.
I asked whether to put personal photos (travel, family, hobbies) on /about to make the site feel more human. Walked through the trade-off carefully because the calm anti-LinkedIn-guru tone in CLAUDE.md is easy to violate accidentally.
What the typical "personal photo" choices signal
- Travel / vacation photos → "look how interesting I am". Reads as self-promotion. Net-negative for technical hiring.
- Family / pet photos → warmer, but eats real estate that should be selling technical signal. Recruiter has ~30s; pet photo doesn't help them decide.
- Performative "humbled to be here" style → directly violates the writing convention. Hard no.
What does help
- Conference / talk photos → "I show up in public, in this domain". Backs the work-in-public brand.
- Maker / workspace photos → "I actually build things", especially if the work is visible (whiteboard, debug session, hardware).
- Single, clean headshot for the avatar → just confirms who the human is. Already in place.
What I shipped
Kept the existing avatar dropzone in /admin/site as the only mandatory photo slot. Added an optional "Outside of work" section at the bottom of /about that:
- Renders only if hobby text OR at least one photo is set.
- Renders nothing by default (the section disappears, not just empties).
- Hint text in the admin UI says: "Conference / maker / workspace shots work best. Skip family/vacation."
The default is "no personal photos". Adding one is a deliberate choice, not the default state.
Pattern
For a calm-tone portfolio, default to negative space, not abundance. Make every personal artifact require an opt-in checkbox or non-empty field; never auto-populate from a placeholder. The structural bias should make it hard to accidentally drift toward LinkedIn-guru visuals.