Picture

I am so jealous of the cute picture Deborah has of herself on her blog.

I do not take a good picture. It truly baffles my youngest. He will take my picture look at the picture on the camera, look at me and shake his head and say "What do you do while I'm snapping the picture that makes you looks so bad?"

I can really only think of a handful of great pictures that were ever taken of me. One was taken by one of my best friends and won her recognition in a photo contest. The rest are all horrible. I think a lot of it is the fact that I do not consider myself a pretty woman, and that I know the picture will probably be bad, it makes me tense up when there is a camera around.

All I know for sure is that what I see in a picture and what I see in a mirror never seems to match up. The youngest must have snapped thirty pictures of me in a row one day trying to get one that would look somewhat natural for a memory board we were making before he found one he would accept, but it was still pretty bad.

Picture taking in our house when I was growing up was always a production. 9 times out of 10 there were no batteries for the camera, let alone film. There are no real pictures from my graduation because of the battery issue. We were ready to leave, there were a couple of Polaroids taken in front of the steps before we ran out of film, and then it was discovered that there were no batteries for the 35mm camera. A mad rush around the house looking for batteries (heaven forbid we stop at the convenience store on the way into town), and then before long we were running late. By the time we got to the high school the professional photographers were gone, my friends were upset because I did not get in a single picture, and I am frantically trying to get to my place in line. My parents and then boyfriend sat up in the stands above me and I swear I saw them attempt to take a couple of pictures with a camera they knew was not working, maybe they were hoping beyond hope that the old battery would give them one more shot. To me, it was just another picture taking day (or no picture taking) in our family. It wasn't until my friend starting taking photography classes and I bought a cheap camera so I could accompany her on her days of picture taking that we started having some real pictures of our family in the photo albums. Of course I was always taking the pictures so I am not in a lot of them.

L & M looked great in their Glamour Shots last year, but that is not for me.

I always tell the boys that I hope they will be able to picture me in their minds because they certainly cannot see the real me in the few pictures there are of me in the albums.

Who knows maybe someday there will be some more great shots taken and I will happy enough with them to put one on this blog. In the meantime, Deborah's is really cute.