Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Is There Such Thing As A Funhouse Camera?

How do you know when your school pictures are bad? When the student delivering them comes through the door, walks around the room to your desk, and hands them to you with the package face down.


Uh huh. We’re not talking about student pictures here. We are talking about Mrs. Hillbilly Mom’s packet of school pictures. Not that she bought them or anything. Not that she even gets them taken on a yearly basis. Before this year, I believe there had been a gap of six or seven years. Nobody wants to leave a class unattended to go wait in the gym to have a picture taken while perched on the three-inch ledge with a little backrest on a box that stands about 18 inches off the floor. And by nobody, I mean Mrs. Hillbilly Mom.

Yes, that bullet was dodged many a time. But this year, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom’s number came up. Every member of the faculty was commanded to have a picture snapped. I went before school. The photographer worked with Sir Talks a Lot for quite some time. Standing. Sitting. Turn your head. Tilt your chin. Take off your glasses. But when he came to Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, he said, “Stand right there with your feet on the prints.” SNAP. One shot.

Maybe that photographer was trying to tell me something. Like, maybe, that there was nothing a camera could do for me. I must say the photos are not exactly flattering. The best description I can think of is: embarrassed dead Shar-Pei that has been left out in the sun for two days.

The Pony describes my picture as: “Um. NOT a Mexican Asian crossbreed? I really am struck speechless. I don’t know what else to say.”

Yeah. I’m starting to think that I’m not exactly photogenic. That I actually LOOK LIKE MY PICTURE.

I won’t be framing my school picture. And I might even try to bargain with the yearbook sponsor to see if an artist’s rendering done by a kindergartener could be substituted. 

HOWEVER, I must admit that this school picture makes me look like Princess Grace of Monaco (BEFORE her death) when compared to my driver's license photo.


3 comments:

  1. Yes, on years when I cannot hide from the school photographer, they take one, show it to me, and ask if I want them to take another.

    What's the use? Each one will be wretched as the one before.

    Perhaps we need to start a club... The Horribly Unphotogenic Snarky Scintillating Imaginative Educators.

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  2. I am not happy to have my picture taken either. If I ask He Who to take one of me, it always makes me look wretched. Selfies have not been good either. It just never looks like the person I see in the mirror. Perhaps the mirror is kinder than the lens?

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  3. Sioux,
    I see what you did there! We're the HUSSIEs!

    ****
    Kathy,
    What's even better is to watch a video, allegedly of you, that doesn't look OR sound like you!

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