Photo Finish

My sister Sheri and I have been chasing the sun this evening, trying to get the perfect new profile picture for this blog.  There are a number of reasons why the whole endeavor was, simply put, illogical claptrap.

1)  The sky, which in my imagination of this shot would be a delicious combination of vivid orange and creamy pink, was just not feeling it tonight.   Watery crap yellow was about the best we got.  Now, before you suggest Photoshop, I have to say that I'm a purist about a lot of things, down-right old-fashioned, some would say.  I wanted the real sky behind the real me.

2)  "Perfect" profile photo?!  So....wait.....HAHAHAAA....yeah, how many THOUSANDS of profile pics (you know, the long-arm shot, or the phone-in-the-mirror cheat-sheet pic), cluttering how many 16 gig SD cards, have we all done, trying to get a "perfect" shot?  If you claim to have gotten one, I could have you declared clinically insane tomorrow, so be careful what you answer.  Then add to that issue the next item.

3)  I am of, shall we say, advancing years middle age a certain chronological distance from optimum physical prowess.  As a sad result, I cut both less and more (a whole lot more) than the perfect figure.  And, in my silly, silly mind, this pic would be styled......wait for it.............as a profile against the sun-----a FULL BODY profile.  MY profile.  Now, Sheri is good with a lens, but, well, even Richard Avedon wouldn't be up to this.  At least the BEST pic made us both laugh:  the colors were wonderful, the shading fabulous, all the right parts looking in the right proportion.....except for my right shoulder, which made me look more Quasimodo than Goddess of English.  I hear you snickering, but don't forget that chances are you've got your own snapped-two-milliseconds-too-late pics out there, and we've all probably seen at least one.

4)  In all seriousness, I don't REALLY want to change my photo.  After all, two years ago I wrote and won a $5,000 grant to travel to New England and visit the homes of many authors just to get that pic.  It's taken at the mailbox of Robert Frost at his cabin in the Green Mountains of Franconia, New Hampshire.  The setting was as lush and damp as any jungle, giving every blade of grass and the riotously-blooming lilies their lustrous colors.  The mailbox is rustic perfection, original to Frost's time and still receiving mail for the small museum and poet in residence there.  The photography, a quick picture by one of the docents at the museum, is nicely framed and shot.  So what's the glitch, why replace?  Yes, of course, it's me, in a loudly-patterned and unflattering shirt, with no makeup, grimacing apologetically to everyone who would ever see said photo.  And I have a similar pic of me on the front steps of Emily Dickinson's home, looking as grim as though I'd just had all my nose hairs plucked out, one by one, instead of spending two days worshiping at the court of my literary queen.  With those kinds of things to choose from, taking an entirely new picture was really the only option.

The one bright spot in all this is that I at least learned recently (thanks to the wonders of some daytime talk show) how to take a great face photo every time, and the photos I've tried it with since have worked much better than my usual plasticized smile and too-wide eyes, making me look like the most spastic family member of those "Awkward Family Photo" posts.  Here's the trick:  duck your chin down, then point the apple of one cheek at the camera.  It might be a bit too fey for some of you fellows, but I'd like to see everyone's results.  In fact, try it, and post the pic as or with a comment.  In the meantime, I'll keep snapping away, waiting for the perfect mix of mystery and art to represent me without making either of us laugh so hard that we snort soda out of our noses.