The Front Side of a Camera

It’s Career Photo Day. This is one of the few occasions where I paint my face and curl my hair. I leave my apartment to catch the bus and remember to bring my lipstick just in case my lips lose color. And what do you know? It’s a hella windy outside. On my way to the photoshoot, my hair is all over the place: in my eyes, in my mouth, and all over my face. What a perfect day to do my hair. I then try and keep a positive outlook and say to myself, “Eh, it’s just a picture. I’ll have fun-loving-looking hair in my picture.” I later find out that hairspray works wonders and my hair didn’t look that bad.

It was my turn, so I stood in front of the camera. My heart starts pounding. I’m thinking in my head that some unknown person is looking at me and I don’t know what to do. “I guess I’ll smile,” I say to myself. I stiff as a tree and paralyzed. What the heck do I do? So many people are looking at me. He shows me the pictures he’s taken and my smile is either too fake or too much. How does one smile genuinely when you’re not happy genuinely at that moment? At that moment, I just wanted to get the darn thing over with. We tried different poses and smiles, but nothing seemed to work. I was so stiff and my smile was so forced.

I don’t do well under the spotlight. The front of the camera is not where a shy person belongs. I know this was a test run for next year’s photo shoot. I need to learn to have confidence in myself and just loosen up. I need to have a different mentality than today’s.

I just don’t want to seem so egotistical.