Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Pictures of me

A few weeks back I told you about the new feature on Picasa that scans your pictures and puts a name with the face.  It’s scanned about half of my pictures and I am stunned that I am in 676 pictures so far.  I used to hate having my picture takeP2100075n.  I was the person that would run and stand behind something or duck under the table because I thought that somehow it was better to have a dumb picture of me cowering than smiling.  It was okay if I didn’t look good in the picture because I didn’t want to look good.


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So what changed?  I think it was a few different things.  The first thing that clicked in my mind was when Laci Peterson went missing.  Do you remember her?  She disappeared in 2002 and every picture they showed of her on the news she had this gorgeous smile.  I wanted to go look for this friendly woman just based on her smile.  But that got me thinking—what if I fell in a well and they had to show my picture on tv, all they would have would be those stupid pictures of me with my hand over the camera.  They wouldn’t even show those on the news and no one would come looking for me trapped in that well.

So I had made up my mind that I would suck it up and let people takeDSC00467 my picture.  But it was still so hard.  I’m a big girl and it’s really easy to be self-conscious in a picture especially when they say the camera adds 10 pounds. I read an article that I really wish I could find but it basically said that anyone you care about isn’t going to look at a picture of you and say, yuck.  They won’t see all those flaws that you see, they see you.
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So now I’ve become a ham in front of the camera.  I am constantly poking my head in front of the camera.  And if there is no one around to take my picture, I’ll take it myself.  If we go somewhere new I want proof that I was there.  I want proof that I have loved ones that are willing to stand next to me and smile.  Looking back through my pictures makes me smile so big.  What great memories I have.  In alot of the pictures I look ridiculous but there are alot of nice ones too.

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I hope if I do end up falling into a mine shaft that they show the nice pictures of me.  I wonder if people would look for me if they knew I was a bamboo-eating, cannon-riding, moose-poop faking princess?  And yes, that is me pretending that I was pooping but hey—I was in Alaska and it’s a good memory.