I hate having my picture taken...

I always feel self conscious when the camera comes out.  There is that split second between "real smile" and the flash that makes me overly aware that my face is about to be captured for posterity.  Now, with the invention of the digital camera, I can be even more uncomfortable about photos. 

The little buggers are everywhere!  On cell phones and iphones, in the hands of friends and coworkers, tiny instant digital traps, waiting for me to have my eyebrows on crooked and my hair sticking up like dandelion fluff, or for that instant just after you pop food into your mouth and your face is distorted as you widen your  jaw to chew...  The bad angle that makes my chin look double, or my head look tiny while my boobs look too big for my body.  The wrong angle, the wrong lighting, the wrong... well... EVERYTHING!  So I decided it was time I learned the true nature of the enemy and I have started taking my own frikkin' picture!

So, out comes the little camera;  I started taking pictures of my feet in new shoes.  Different heels, different styles, flat shoes, sandals, boots...  Placing the camera on the floor and taking shot after shot until I found just the right distance to get something I liked.  I know it sounds silly, and it was a bit juvenile, but I never thought my feet looked as good as the camera showed!  I figured out that if I stand in front of the bathroom mirror I can see the display on the back of the camera in the mirror and actually get a decent idea of how good - or bad - the shot is going to be!  I understand now why most "self portraits" on the internet have you holding the camera so you have to look up at it!  I guess it's all about the angle, because when I look down I admit I see lumps and bumps, saggy bits and cellulite, and I forget about all the hollows that curve in UNDER the bits that curve out.  I realized that taking a shot from the top down is way different from setting the camera on the side and literally taking a different angle. 

It's kind of a metaphor for my life.  I'm having to look at everything from a different angle, and my short sited views of what my life was are so very different from the wider views I am realizing as my life broadens and opens up.  Life is more complex, but simpler, too.  There is a lot I am still learning about, almost everything really.  It all depends on what angle I choose to take when I look at myself.  Up close I can see all the flaws, but none of the solutions, so I pull myself back a bit and the flaws are still there, but they make up what makes me unique.  If I can find one solution for one problem then I hope more will follow.  Maybe it's not so much a solution as a different way of seeing.  I keep doing the same things over and over, expecting somehow to make things different.  But that, my friends, is the definition of crazy!  After all, isn't the saying "if you want something different you have to do something you have never done before"?  I have listened all my life to other people telling me what they don't want, and I have been narrow minded and afraid, unable or unwilling to make that jump from concentrating on never doing "that" again to realizing what the other potential good things are.  I have told myself "don't" for so long that I needed permission to "do" ordinary things.  Like calling friends, hugging my children, allowing myself to be happy.

So I have given myself permission to be goofy with my camera.  It's fun.  It's silly,  It's also empowering.  And I actually like some of the photos I have taken.  The rest I can hit the "delete" button on, and they will be gone!  And trust me, there have been a LOT of those ones!