To know me is to know there are as few pictures of me as possible. If it weren’t for the holidays, I don’t know if there would be much of a photographic record of my life. That’s how much I don’t like having my picture taken. When my mother-in-law is here for Thanksgiving, she always has her camera out and manages to capture more than a few shots. So at least there’s one or two pics each year, in spite of any grumblings from me.
Which makes it all the more amazing that I volunteered to have new headshots done a week ago. What could I have been thinking, willingly placing myself in front of a camera? Maybe that it had been five or six years since the last ones. Maybe that no one sees me in a tie anymore. And maybe that I was just tired of sending in an out-of-date picture.
So there I was in the studio, trying not to have an anxiety attack. And to be fair, I warned my publicist and the photographer I was likely to be a problem child. However, I suspect I’m not the first client of either one to share that tidbit of info. At least I wasn’t acting the diva, demanding drinks and snacks and special lighting, although I think a vodka tonic might have taken the edge off just a little.
Strangely I can’t point to one particular moment that has driven my compulsion to hide behind an object when a camera comes out. Perhaps it’s all the awkward pictures memorialized in school yearbooks. Or possibly the Olan Mills (if anyone remembers who that was – and if not, check this on Instagram) family portraits when we were kids. I can still recall one family photo with my stepmother’s hair in an almost beehive-ish updo, and lots of feathered hair. On the plus side, it wasn’t Glamour Shots.
My sister has shared with me some really great pictures of me when I was younger. I look at those and have a hard time imagining I was every that small, that cute, or that goofy. But there I am, and I suspect a lot of people have that same experience as they get older.
Lucky for me then that the photographer was great and put me at ease. I did get yelled at quite a bit, which for some reason was oddly calming? We might have to dig into that just a bit to see what’s going on there.
I was nice and didn’t break into vogue poses. Well, only a few, which might have prompted some of the yelling. I did refrain from trying a Charlie’s Angels pose, but that would have just looked silly without anyone else to back me up. Matthew was there so we could get a couple of shots for the podcast, but I’m not sure he would have known what to do.
And that probably wouldn’t have made the best headshot. But it would have been memorable.
