Advertisements Are Sacred

I’ve been going through old MySpace messages today. They go all the way back to December of 2004. Anyway, I came across a discussion I had with a random stranger named Aaron. This is what he asked:

But anyhoot, I wanted to ask you a dumb question, please don’t think I’m an idiot! Is a person really photogenic or is it just the right photographer and time? My sister seems to think she is unphotogenic, but I think not. I tend to look like a schmuck in pictures too, maybe you can help?!

And my response was:

Some people are definitely easier to photograph than others. It has little to do with you how you look and more to do with how you react to the camera. The people who look good in pictures are the ones who act natural in front of a camera. A lot of people get nervous or anxious about it, and they either look uncomfortable, or they look like they’re playing to the camera. Good portrait photographers are the ones who can get those people to relax. Most people don’t relax that quickly, so that’s why you’ll see with snapshots and [low-to-mid-level retail chain] portraiture that people look a little funny. Usually, you have to take several shots that aren’t that great until the subject is used to the camera being there, and then most people will loosen up and you can get good pictures of them.

The only thing I would add to that now is that the photographer needs to be comfortable as well. Perhaps more important is that the photographer needs to project confidence. If the photographer doesn’t look like they know what they’re doing, the people being photographed are gonna look a little worried. If a direction doesn’t look as good as you thought it would, just try something else and move on. And as for the people being photographed, my advice to them is not to worry about how they look. If the photographer is a talented professional, they’ll look good. They just need to have fun with it and enjoy themselves.

Based on 2004 figures, that’s 1/5th of a second’s worth of Iraq war spending.

My paternal grandfather passed away last September, 10 days before his 95th birthday, while I was on a plane to Boston. In the months since, my grandmother has decided to move out of the house they moved into in 1950 and move into the retirement community where her sisters live. This weekend, I drove up to Fresno to help my dad sort through the 57+ years worth of stuff in the basement. We found many items of various levels of interest. At the most mundane were the accounting logs from the farm my grandfather owned with his brothers in the 50’s, 60′, and 70’s. More interesting were the various aeronautical charts, airplane brochures, and car brochures ranging from the 1959 Chevrolet brochure to mid-90’s GM truck brochures. Much of it was up for grabs, and I am now in possession of my grandfather’s tiny B.A. diploma from Fresno State College, my great-grandfather’s poster-size high school diploma (he graduated in 1895), a number of my grandfather’s army uniforms (including his class-A tunic that still has his 1st Lieutenant epaulet pins, officer’s and Air Corps lapel pins, and pilot’s wings all affixed), and something my dad and I like to call “the letter opener of death,” as it is a letter opener that looks like some kind of ceremonial dagger. My grandmother and Aunt Janet had invited a World War II buff to go through the stuff with us, and he was able to tell me a lot about the things we found. We let him take a number of documents, training manuals, and uniform pieces with him. We also found a handful of pictures, including the one below. We determined that my grandfather received his commission in 1938 from the documents, letting us date the photograph sometime between mid-1938 (since he is wearing an officer’s uniform) and the end of 1941, by the placement of various insignia on the uniforms. The rank insignia are on the shoulders, and the overseas caps and left lapels display the division insignia (the right lapel would have the officer’s “U.S.” insignia on it). This was changed after our entry into World War II. Anyway, my grandfather is second from the right. Click the picture to embiggen.

Oh, and because my grandfather lived through the Great Depression, he had a tendency to hide money all over the place. I could pay this month’s bills in Susan B. Anthony dollars now.