Photo Phear

It's a weird thing, looking at Flickr. How people represent their lives, display their friends and establish their online identities in snapshots and art prints. I read too much into it, maybe, when I complain that some of my friends never seem to disply pictures of *me*. Is that reading too much? I don't know. One person, when I commented, just said flat out "it's not about equal representation, it's just about making *me* and *my life* look as glamourous as possible." So it's hard not to read that as my being not quite glamourous to make the cut.

Though I guess the other half is that I don't like having my picture taken. Then again, who does? Everyone thinks they're ugly when confronted with a camera.

Or is that it? I don't necessarily think so. I was trying to explain to someone why I am so dreadling our upcoming photo shoot. It's not really that I believe I'm ugly - though I say that I do. It's that I've got a very definite mental picture of myself in my head - a tall, blonde guitar goddess - and she looks *nothing* like the fat, scowling, jowly, middle aged woman that turns up in the camera's lense.

So when people don't like having their photos taken, it's not that they think they're ugly. It's that the camera reveals that they are not as attractive in the flesh as they are in their own minds.