Say Cheese!

I have a question for you.  It’s one that won’t hurt when you think about it and I bet you already have an answer.  Do you, or anyone you know, have more than one picture of themselves that they actually like? You know, a really good picture that your hair looks good, your mouth isn’t half open or full of food, your eyes don’t have a mysterious evilness, your body isn’t cut off at the ankles (when the intention was a full body shot) and you appear thin? Oh, and it has to be relatively current; if you are over the age of 40, your baby picture doesn’t count.

I can find one picture that I think is passable.  It is my high-school graduation picture from 1976.  This is back when senior portraits were only “head” shots and it was in that nice sepia brown that smoothed out skin tone (come to think of it, they were quite proficient at airbrushing out a few acne blemishes because I don’t recall my complexion looking quite like that) and the photographer took the time to make sure your hair, turtleneck sweater (very trendy and I would say out of the 500+ girls in my senior class, 499 wore them in their picture, except for a girl named Tammy who wore this way low-cut top that showed cleavage… since I was not heavenly endowed, it was better to heed my mother’s advice and go the “classic” route… wonder whatever happened to Tammy? Probably has a few kids, gravity hit her hard and everything has fallen south – a girl can hope can’t she? – but, I digress).

When my son was born I was going to go about pictures of him in a different way than my parents.  No embarrassing photos were going to grace the walls of our house.  Angelic poses, happy gurgles and impish grins were the only ones that I thought he was capable of.  Then, out of the blue, came the “real” him.  I now covet the pictures of him wearing underwear on his head and a batman cape, being a superhero of sorts.  Or the one, which I proudly say, won a national competition, with him sitting in a bucket holding a fishing pole (it’s cute, really, you have to see it to appreciate it).  I am also a mom who every year purchases school pictures no matter what they look like.  I figure they have perfectly caught him the way he was on that day.  Besides, the approach I now take with images of him is that all of these can and will be used at a future date for bribery material when he brings “the” girl home to meet us.

Makes you wonder if it isn’t a conspiracy by the manufacturers of cameras (and in an era gone by, film) to keep you buying new and improved contraptions in hopes that it is a technical error that is at fault for defects in a photo and not the subject matter.  Although I do think that some of the software that is available to “doctor” up pictures that may have a flaw or two should win some sort of award.

Keep in mind that a “good” picture is in the eye of the beholder.  We sometimes are too critical of ourselves (okay, it doesn’t help that we are exposed in those fancy smancy glossy fashion magazines to pictures of women who’s cellulite, age spots, sags, bags and grown out roots don’t show up – how real can that be?).  Not that every picture we have ever taken should be for public consumption, but knowing that we were captured for posterity isn’t always about how it looks.  It is not only the image, but also the memories behind the picture.  Using this as the modus operandi, I bet you can find a lot more “good” pictures of yourself and enjoy the walk down memory lane.

Cynthia A. McClelland, curious observer of the obvious with interpretations of the oddities of daily life.  Mother, wife and lover of the furry, resides in the north Lake Tahoe area.                

Cynthia A. McClelland © 2003-