Say cheese

Earlier this week I had a professional head shot taken to include in the book. Horrors. Having my picture taken ranks up there with going to the dentist in terms of anxiety-inducing experiences. It’s awkward. It’s tense. And it often produces an unpleasant outcome.

 

My last “professional” photo experience was back in the day when I worked in a corporate-owned newspaper. The higher-ups decreed everyone on staff would provide a head shot to be included in promotional material, and we were to take said pictures of one another. You would think an office full of newspaper photographers could handle the assignment of taking one another’s picture, but you might as well have given a camera to a monkey.

 

 

Collectively, we had photographed town festivals, high school sports, car wrecks, house fires, political candidates stumping through Iowa County, two-headed calves, the 30,000 people on bicycles phenomenon that is RAGBRAI and pretty much anything that can happen at a county fair. But when tasked with taking photos of one another, we approached it with about as much enthusiasm as convicts being prodded along to the gallows.

 

The corporate office, in typical corporate office style, announced the deadline for submitting the photos  was approximately two hours before we knew anything about them, so there was no time to obsess about wardrobe or hair or makeup. That was probably a good thing. We took each other’s pictures in a mechanical, git-er-done approach that produced predictable results. In other words, our head shots all looked like booking photos at the county jail. 

 

Flash forward 15 years and even the thought of someone taking my picture taken sent me into a panic. You're dealing with someone whose social media profile picture is of her dog. I toyed with the idea of just doing a selfie and calling it good, but experience has taught me I am the world’s worst selfie-taker. I would put the pressure of making me look decent on someone else’s shoulders.

 

Exhibit A: Not a good selfie-er. But I love this pic because Phoenix.

 A friend recommended a local studio photographer, and I made the appointment. Then I spent the next two weeks losing my mind. What to wear? What to do with my hair? Makeup, yes? Makeup, no? Should I buy a new outfit? What kind of outfit? Maybe I should have my hair done. Maybe I should wear a hat. I tore my closet apart and reached the conclusion I had nothing to wear. That is not entirely true. I have plenty to wear. Plenty of hoodies and flannels and graphic T-shirts emblazoned with cartoon dogs and clever sayings like “Haulin’ Auss” and “Total Sit Show.” 

 

I didn’t have a particular “look” in mind, mostly because my natural “look” is jeans with a T-shirt or jeans with a hoodie. I wasn’t about to try re-inventing myself for a picture. So back I went to the closet. I barely had anything resembling a professional wardrobe left from my years at the newspapers. My last five years with the papers were work-from-home, and I’ve been retired for two years so any semblance of dress clothes had long gone out the window. I have the requisite black funeral/wedding pants, a few pair of decent brown slacks for showing Raider and more jeans, cargo pants and hiking pants that should probably be allowed.

 

After much agonizing, I settled on a long-sleeved, button-down teal blouse. Simple. Classic. Also, it fit and it didn’t need fussy ironing.

 

The next problem — um, project — was my hair. About six months ago, I decided to let my very short, very layered, very no-nonsense cut grow out. And it did. It’s kinda fun. It’s also curly. In the summer, with humidity, it’s very curly in a self-styling kind of way that is borderline defiant. I’m okay with that. I did both high school and college in the 1980s. I spent more time conquering my then-long hair with blow dryers, mousse, gel, curling irons and Aqua Net than I did going to class. I’ve paid my hair dues and have reached the point in life where my hair can do as it pleases. That is not a hill I want to die on.

 

 

Except I thought perhaps I should care just a little because this picture was going to be seen by (hopefully) a lot of people, and I didn’t want their first impression to be “Whoa. How did this woman write a book when she can’t even style her hair?”

 

Accessorizing was minimal, although I had nightmares about the earrings I’d chosen. I dreamed I showed up at the photography studio wearing earrings the size of Buick hubcaps, and the photographer found absolutely nothing wrong with that and proceeded to do the shoot, never questioning why I had barrel hoops in my ears.

 

So, off I went on Tuesday morning, feeling nervous and starched in my button-down shirt, my hair more-or-less behaving itself and the proper earrings in my ears, to have my picture made. That’s what my grandmother always called it — having your picture made. 

 

The photographer was wonderful, in the way good photographers can get you to relax while simultaneously asking you to stand and turn and cross your arms and tip your head left (no, your other left), chin down, shoulders back, weight on your right leg, lean in, smile, smile bigger. In some ways, it was akin to having a mammogram. Ladies, if you know, you know. I kept waiting for her to tell me to hold my breath and not move.

 

The only thing she didn’t ask was for me to put my ears up. Dog show folks know what I’m talking about. If a friend had been standing behind her with a squeaky or shaking a bag of treats (i.e., cupcakes), I would have relaxed into the process even more.

 

I haven’t seen the edited shots yet, but she showed me the raw images when we were done. They looked like me, my hair was not totally out of control and I did not appear to be a candidate for Cell Block A. Really, that’s all I can ask.