Day 15 - High-resolution photos

Occasionally, a publication that is about to publish my work, asks me to send them a high-resolution photo of mine, and a bio.

Though a bio is painful, it can somehow be done after a lot of head-scratching. 

But the photograph is such a headache!  We're not big on portraits in our family, and all pics of me are group pics.  In most of them, I look puzzled or angry or lost.  And if I do find a photo I like and cut out my face from it, it becomes a little blurred, and doesn't serve the purpose of the publication, not being high-resolution.

So that means a sudden scrambling for photos.  I pull out Picasa and search for suitable photos and rue my fate again about how I married someone who doesn't care too much about  photography.  (I conveniently omit the fact that when the spouse does bring out a camera, I claim that *insert excuse here*, and refuse to have my picture taken.)  

And then, after an unsuccessful photo album search, S brings out the camera, and I wear a decent dress and comb my hair, and he takes a dozen photos of me looking woodenly into the camera.  I see them all, and reject them immediately. 

Then I go back to the albums, reject those again, and go back to the pics S has taken, and dislike them all again, claiming that I look evil in them. [I open my eyes wide and tense my eyelids to avoid blinking, and my smile is more like a grimace.]  I tear my hair out and roundly curse the publication, demanding to know why they want my pic and why they shouldn't be satisfied with a blank space next to my story. 

S again takes out the camera, and we take a few more photos, with him joking to put me at ease and make me smile a real smile.  And then I go through the new set of photos, and though I still don't like them much, my patience has worn out by now.  On top of that, S selects a couple and says, "These are good enough, perfectly fine, you look nice," etc and I am not sure if he is serious, or is just saying that to make me get off his back, and so we finally select one, and before I change my mind, I send it off.

And all this, after I've spent an inordinate amount of time on it.   I then think to myself, "I have to get a professional photo or something for next time, to avoid all this trouble." And then I say to myself - "Next time?  How do you know, dear girl, that there's going to be a next time?"  And then I skulk away.

Until next time.