Enjoyed reading about your design process! Re:

There actually has to be a picture of me on the front page of the site, much as I don’t really want it, for syndication purposes. The photo is used as an icon for the link should anything I say be replied to elsewhere.

If you want the picture to be part of your machine discoverable profile, but not shown on your site, you can set its style to display:none. I do this on my post permalink pages.