Go With It
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to distinguish between when I should speak up and when to just “go with it.” And then there are times I’ve had to do a little of both.
I dealt with this very lesson during the photoshoot I did for my new author headshot. It was time for an update, as my former pic from my last self-published book 11 years ago was a selfie angled down to hide my double chin. It was clear I was leaning over, and the expression on my face couldn’t hide my amusement at said position.
But per “Donna usual,” I was sure it would be much easier this time getting a better shot. This time, I had help from my friend and partner in marketing crime, Olivia Wu. As an art director and photographer (with a nicer camera than just a smartphone), she scoped out a location and found some fun backdrops at The Lab, an “anti-mall” in Costa Mesa. Being an open space, there would be plenty of natural light so we wouldn’t have to worry about needing extra equipment. She suggested I bring one light shirt and one dark shirt to see which one would photograph better, and I got a haircut shortly before for a nice, clean look. I was ready.
I was almost giddy when I parked and saw some of the backgrounds Olivia had sent to me. We decided to start with a quaint wood-shutter-and-trellis motif that had a bench where I could sit. After adjusting my hair, I found a pose that was casual and comfortable, and Olivia instructed me on how to hold up my head. But right as she was about to take the picture, she said, “Donna, I can’t see your eyes. You’re gonna have to take off your glasses.”
That’s when I remembered I have transition lenses. Shit.
“I can’t take off my glasses!” I insisted. “I’m never not wearing them. I can’t have my author brand be authenticity and then go without them because they have a mind of their own.”
“Well, let me take a couple photos and see what it looks like,” Olivia replied. This is what it looked like.
Cute, but definitely not good for the original purpose.
“Let’s try some shots without your glasses,” Olivia suggested, “and we’ll see what we can get with some of these outside backgrounds.”
Not wanting to be a difficult subject for my friend who was helping me out, I decided to “go with it” and check out some of the other fun places she had found. She kept snapping away as I tried different head tilts and facial expressions, and a couple times I did poses like pointing to my glasses, just to show that I did still have them on me (just not ON me).
After she showed me some of the shots, she asked what I thought. And while I liked a lot of them, they just didn’t feel like ME. Helping prove my point, when I showed them to my boyfriend, Cai, his response was, “Wow. You really do look different without your glasses.”
So I decided to speak up and suggested we try to get more shots inside the common area, where there was a roof over a small open room with different kinds of furniture. We found a few places where my glasses behaved and I started to play around with different positions, just being goofy. Olivia captured everything. Some places came out great…
…while others did nothing except emphasize my gut. LOL
But it was through these poses that another problem arose. At one point, Olivia stopped to adjust my shirt, telling me, “You have a lingerie situation happening.”
“Lingerie?” I looked down at my chest. “Huh?”
It wasn’t until after when I saw some of the finished product that I understood what she was talking about. Having lost about 20 pounds and yet to have bought new bras, we had the tableau of a woman with dented boobs.
Face palm. Thankfully we were able to fix the situation for a useable shot for my home page.
By the end of the afternoon, after plenty of gut-busting laughter, we had A LOT of pictures to choose from, for headshots and beyond (check out my About page for my official author photo, and my social media accounts this week for more pics). And while it wasn’t the easiest or smoothest photoshoot, it was exactly ME—creative, fun, messy, and genuine.