5.12.2005

Welcome Miss Hag. Virgins!

For those of you familiar with Self-Portrait Day, you may be at this site for the first time because my portrait is up this week (along with a skydiving gal from Guam and a Brooklyn legal administrator purportedly having sex during his self-portrait).

I agonized . . .no, that's not true . . .I gleefully fretted over which photo to choose for SPD. In the end, I chose the same photo as my Blogger profile. Here's why . . .

Two distinct trends have formed since I purchased a digital camera for my household:

1.) The BF takes supermacro close-up photographs of random objects: the surface of a pineapple, flower petals in a glass of water, the corner of the room where the ceiling meets the wall. If you were to hijack my hard drive, you would find hundreds of photos of a bottlecap.
2.) I take pictures of myself.

Everyone has a few minor talents that they do not put on their resume. Skills that are not immortalized on a trophy somewhere or celebrated at a formal gathering. Mine include: being able to balance spoons on my nose and cheeks, carrying 6 water glasses at once and taking a nice photograph. Though, perhaps not all at the same time.





And I'm not ashamed to say it. "My name is Marisol and I am photogenic." Call it vanity if you will, but I worked hard at learning how to make a face for the camera that seems at once relaxed, candid, natural and artsy. Years of my childhood were spent wistfully practicing in a mirror. See backstory.

And, it should be noted, there is a difference between being gorgeous and being photogenic. I am not Angelina Jolie. I am not deluded into believing I am something I am not. I am me and I can make myself into a nice version of myself on film.

So, why choose the mouth shot? Why not choose a full-on Glamour shot?

I took this portrait of my mouth because I discovered a lip gloss that I like and I wanted to see what it looked like on my face. Sure, I could have just looked in a mirror, but I wanted to really see it. So, one evening while I was home alone, I set up a light on a stand and took a series of pictures of my mouth. It took quite a few takes to get it just right. I had to adjust the light and reapply the lip gloss, change the F-stop and flash settings. It was a big ol' project. While I was doing this, a friend called to chat and asked me what I was up to.

It suddenly occurred to me that I had just spent the better part of an hour taking a picture of lip gloss. This fact horrified and amused me all at once. And that is a true picture of me.