A few weeks ago we got a call from our church informing us that they are taking photos for the directory. They wanted all church members to schedule their photos. So, since My Wife and I haven't had our photos professionally done in about 3 or 4 years I signed us up.
The day came and we went and sat for our photos. Afterwards they take you into a room and show them to you so that you can pick out which ones you want. My Wife, as always, forgot to take off her glasses, so several photos were discarded simply because of the glare in the lenses.
"Oh, they'll touch these up before you get them. They can remove that glare," the salesperson assured us.
"But it completely obscures her eyes," I pointed out, "and if you don't get a person's eyes JUST RIGHT then the photo is crap. I don't think they can fix that."
"No, they can. You'd be surprised," she reassured me.
"No, I don't think so," I insisted, and rejected those photos.
I wasn't thrilled with the options that were left to us after removing the ones where My Wife's eyes were just white flashes because I looked less than stellar in the remaining photos. Somehow I looked my best in photos in which she had no eyes. Hmm.
When the photos arrived in the mail yesterday I was shocked. "Who the hell is that?!" I asked while looking at my own face.
"What's wrong," My Wife who didn't see why it mattered that her eyes were missing in the rejected photos asked.
"They did something to my eyes," I pointed out. "They look weird. This doesn't look like me."
"It looks good," she reassured me unconvincingly.
"No, it doesn't. I don't even know who this person is.""
Even though I'm pretty sure they fucked up the photos with their touch-ups I still don't like the trend I'm seeing. Fewer and fewer photos of me are even remotely recognizable to me. I look at them and say "who is that?"
Earlier this week Kami was commenting on how bad she thought she looked in a photo of herself. She said she had crow's feet and she didn't like her arms or something. Her friends assured her that she looks great. And to be honest, Kami is a fine looking Texas hottie. But I understand how she must be feeling.
Lately I look in the bathroom mirror and don't know who I'm looking at. That's not me in there. I don't know who it is, but it's not me. In the photos that the church photographer fucked up all I can really say, aside from the fact that you shouldn't fuck with the eyes in a photo if you want the customer to buy it, is that it was a photo of my dad.
I am running my ass off these days, but I can't run far enough or fast enough to fix this. That's not my face. I don't know who that is, but it isn't me.
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