Say CHEESE! Re: My smile and why you seldom see it.

Re: My smile and why you seldom see it.

Yes, it's a small book, so hold your breast - I mean your breath, brace yourself, and read on:

During my *entire* grade school AND high school experience, I absolutely and positively loathed 'picture day' to the point that - honestly - I damned near had panic attacks on every picture day of every school year that I ever attended school - from Kindergarten through 12th Grade.

In an on-again and off-again fashion, my mother would yell at me (as she was so good at) for 'not smiling' in my school pictures AND she would yell at me for smiling in my school picture poses! 

It was to the point that when my class' pictures would return from the school photographer, I would hide my large envelop for DAYS in my school desk or in my hall locker, and lie to my mother, telling her "My class' pictures haven't come in yet." (Even though both my brothers brought home their pictures on the same day!)

Ultimately, I knew that I was going to have to face her, and I bit the bullet and brought them home. 

My mother would yell at me 1) If I smiled in my pictures. and 2) If I didn't smile in my pictures. 

The sub-plot of this saga is this:

I will NEVA, EVA "Smile" when somebody has me pose for a pic and says, "Smile!" or "Say Cheese!" I won't do it - so don't ask me to. When I WAS forced to smile when posing for pictures, my smiles looked horribly contrived and fake. Horribly. 

I strongly advise any and everybody that wants a picture of me smiling to snap that shot when I am completely unaware that my pic is being taken - when I am smiling naturally. THOSE smiles, my friends, are absolutely beautiful. I get my share of compliments on my beautiful smile when I am out and about - especially since I have a mouth full of dentures. (I've had full dentures since I was 29.) Compare and contrast that to the contrived smiles that look twisted and wrong. Just wrong. 

The above 2 pics are examples of smiles that were caught off-guard. In the photo with Mark, I was setting my camera on 'auto', and posing - with no smile - for my own 'selfies'. I have 10 seconds from the time I click the shutter button until it actually takes the pic to get my pose just right. Mark stepped in and squeezed me about 1 second and a half before the shutter automatically snapped. I was laughing at his antics, thusly, the smile was organic and not contrived. 

In the above pic, I was 18, and had been out of high school only a few months. For ONCE in my life, I wanted to pose for my own pictures the way *I* wanted to pose for them. Before I even got in front of the camera, I told the photographer at the front desk of Olan Mills, "Don't say "Smile", because I won't do it. Don't even try it. If you want a natural smile out of me, start telling me jokes. Tell me something FUNNY! THEN - you will get the smile you've been looking for. When you do - don't tell me when you're going to click the shutter - just do it!" He did just that. He started telling me jokes, and I started laughing, because he was actually funny. 

The shutter snapped. The rest is history. I will not, however, smile on command for posed pictures. In fact, as you can see from my profile pics, I have learned how to turn a 'stern' face in to an art form. 

When people approach me at events and functions, and Hell, when they approach me every day in WalMart, malls - even the grocery store - for a pic, without exception, I give them a ready-made, stern-faced pose. I have mastered that one. And it works for me. 

Actually, posing for *every* profile pic that has my very familiar stern-faced pose is very easy and effortless to pull off.  This is how I do it with predictable results every time:

1) I have my camera on its tripod.  
2) I have my lighting already set up.
3) I click the 10 second timer on the shutter.  I know exactly how many warning beeps the camera will give me before snapping the pic. 
4) I get my body into the position that I have planned.  
5) I usually have just a couple seconds to spare, so I look DOWN at the ground until I know the last beep / second is up.  THEN, I quickly look up and directly at the camera lens.

In that fashion, I don't have time to pull a contrived or posed look.  I don't have time to get my face 'set' in that "Come on, damn it! Click the shutter!" pose.  "Mr. Stern Face" arrives at the party a fraction of a single second before the shutter clicks.  Even though it's a serious face, it has a natural, organic quality that I couldn't hope to achieve if I stood there with a silly grin plastered on my face, waiting for what seems like an eternity for that damned shutter to do it's job and to end my merciless suffering.  he he he

This is the results of that small effort:




- Michael