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.

I dreamt a dream

I had a dream last night, I was in London, boarding the Titanic with Laurie, Tony, Su-lin, Cam and Elaine.
This wasn't the original Titanic, but a restoration. I noted that Tony and Cam were getting on really well, and I was saying that my Grandmother had survived the original sinking*. We were walking the length of the ship. I then found myself and about half a dozen others on a lifeboat off the ship. We were told they had overbooked and we couldn't stay on.
I returned to port and watched the ship sail without me, but with Laurie, Su, Tony, Elaine and Cam still on board.
I waited at the dock, which now began more and more to resemble an airport, or train terminal.
As I waited I sorted through my satchel and my camera back popped oven briefly - probably ruining the film in it.

I woke, feeling vaguely depressed.

*(this is not true, but in the dream it was).

Hat Metamorphosis

This was originally bought as a "summer" cotton Greek Fisherman's Hat, in Sanoma - on my honeymoon I think. I bought a wool one too, but certain hats I just can't seem to hang on too, wool Greek fisherman's hats and berets.

I think I was able to hang on to this one because I made the choice to wash it, in the washing machine. Don't EVER do this if you want your hat to look remotely the same as it was when it went in. My hat's aren't "collectibles" I ware them, a lot. This means they get dirty.

After the wash it was a cap, yes, but not a fisherman's hat. Turns out it wasn't exactly color-fast and the bill if the cap I think was stiffened with cardboard. This wash made it look, well "legitimate" comes to mind. In no way would some one ware this as a statement of style, it was the real thing, what thing I discovered while researching some of my other hats.

I saw a picture of a cap, and it was called a "fiddlers" cap. I'm pretty sure that was attached to the style after Fiddler of the Roof. Although the style itself is very old - predating even the early nineteen seventy's. I tried to find out how old, but the difficulty level exceeded my determination and so I gave up.

What I DID discover is hat's are REALLY out of Vogue. In my search I came a across a site that looked like it was designed about ten years ago. It had a links page, of the eleven links, nine of them were dead. One looked like an even earlier design. It made me feel really special.

To re-cap (pun intended) My Greek Fisherman's Hat turned into a Fiddlers Cap, and being interested in hat history is very, very fringe.