Your Picture Here

Su-Lin Fantella (Australia) wrote
at 1:14pm yesterday
Karen, why do you stay out of photos? You look GREAT and exactly the same as you always have!!! Don't shy away from the camera, lady!

Karen Runquist (Calgary, AB) wrote
at 1:18pm yesterday
Su-
like you I a not all that comfortable in front of the camera. I think that's why I became the resident photographer, just so I would have an excuse to stay out of the frame!! PS- thanks :o)
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I read the above exchange and, after resisting my first impulse to comment on the irony of who was making the comment (an impulse that I obviously just succumbed to) I began to write on Karins "wall" in face book about why she should be in more pictures. I discovered that yes there is a limit to wall posts (1000 characters). So I moved my comments here.

My theory about why you should have your picture taken, now.

1. First you have to accept the idea that youth = beauty.

2. Then you can accept that you are never going to look better tomorrow than you do today (see youth = beauty above 1). So more pictures now = better pictures. Also reference my pictures from 20 years ago and your pictures from the same time - don't you wish you had more because youth = beauty. Now you may think that it's too late as youth is gone therefore beauty has left, that is true only if you die tomorrow. Believe me, you look way better now than you do at sixty.

3. Also - to be considered, you are not invisible. Wether or not someone takes a picture of you, they can still see you, having your photo taken dose not make you visible.

4. Be in as many pictures as possible, more pictures of you = greater chance of good pictures. People like to post good pictures, or really bad ones. The really bad ones make you look like a good sport thus making you look good anyway. (Magna is a supreme example of this).

5. "But I'm fat. I don't want my picture taken." Again reference #3. Also consider it as before picture, you know. You see these people who have lost weight and either there is no picture or some grainy awful image. You may think - "I'm never going to get thinner" - then reference reason 2. Also this smacks of "waiting to be happy" the idea that happiness is something that will happen later, after a certain event like, being rich, or thin. Those may bring happiness, but why wait? Enjoy the journey, and who doesn't take pictures of journeys? Stupid people, that's who.

6. Do it for the children. As an act of love. I heard a piece on the radio about this guys mom who despised the idea of having her picture taken and always disparaged others as a pointless exercise. After her death he and his sister stumbled upon a few seconds of film footage of her walking out of a door at some family reunion. They watched it over and over, it was the only image they had of her. I don't doubt that she would have thought that stupid - but it mattered to them.
I love my pictures of my mom, especially the ones that are perhaps unflattering, the unposed shots, this is her. I love her and always have from the my earliest memories, I don't know why having images of her make me glad but they do.

7. Finally. It is important, I don't know why it's important, not really. But I know it is. Ultimately the only pictures you will regret are the ones that were never taken.