Photo shoot

Pointing away from the view to get better light

I am in the preparing phase as well as the busy phase now. I am starting to take new supplements to boost my immune system before chemo. I got my hair styled in the way I might like to wear it (or er, someone else’s hair anyway) for many months to come. And some time in the last two weeks, I realised I that Keith and I would need a book picture for our book jacket well before my hair grows back. I was not excited about a post-chemo book picture, so we needed to get a move on.

colour matching

My last book picture was taken by a local guy who specialises in portraits that are nestled in a location. Behind me in my book picture, you can see the little cottage/shed where I wrote the book. It feels like me, and I’m at home. I love that. The downside of this photographer—and it might be every single photographer, but I have little experience—is that I am constantly feeling wrong. “Move your chin up.” “Move your chin down.” “Smile some, a real smile. Really a real smile. Ooh, not any teeth though. Smile with no teeth.” “You look uncomfortable, move your body like this. No that’s worse. Do it the other way. No that’s worse too. Hmmm.” You get the picture. But Keith and I were moving at speed and so we didn’t have time to find a replacement.  It turns out that I did something better though—I found a distraction.

You can see my house over my shoulder

With two people in the picture, I got less attention. And with Keith as one of the two people, in his full shirt and pleated pants, I got way less attention. Now Keith was the focus. “Lean against the post. No, that wrinkles your shirt. Lean less. No but look comfortable. Oh no, not like that. And your shirt is still wrinkled. Let me fix that. Ok cross your legs the other way. No, that wrinkles your pants—looks like a giant arrow pointing at your crotch. Do something else. No, a different something else. Good. Now smile!” I just stood there with a genuine smile on my face this time, listening to my partner get all the flak. Isn’t that what partners are for?

too windy to be outside

One more aside. This photographer is great at placing people into a setting. But this is New Zealand and the settings aren’t always great for being placed into. On this day in a month with limited time, the wind was blowing too hard to be outside. So these pictures were taken inside a (truly stunning) house that has no special meaning to me and looks (from these pictures) to be a studio anywhere. I know cancer is supposed to make me stop sweating the small stuff. I know that’s one of its gifts, and believe me, I’m trying to harvest as many cancer gifts as possible. But this one is elusive so far. I still don’t have the sweet spot between knowing what’s actually important and what isn’t. Or ok, that’s wrong. I KNOW that it’s not actually important that we have a picture that says something sort of sentimental and New Zealand to me. But I don’t know how to let it go, now that I know it’s not important. I’ll let you know when we see the proofs…

 (You can see from these pictures that the house we were in is magnificent. But the light and the wind meant we pointed away from the outside view and elegance, and in toward plain white walls. Not the fault of the house or the photographer, just life, really...)