vanity

I am all too well aware that an ordeal comes with a new job: people wanting pictures of one.   This is not, believe me, something that I appreciate (there are more than one reasons why I'm found behind, not in front of, a camera).   But - even though I only had my iPhone as weapon - I determinedly went to work today - I simply must come up with something better than a six year old photo (flatteringly emaciated though it looks), or my last fall-back, lifted from a defending grad student's website (sorry, Paul, but thank you - it got me out of a tight spot).

And so - I produced many pictures of me looking thoroughly sulky (in my mother's side of the family, we have a Photograph Face, which was much on display); a number with me smiling lopsidedly - very lopsidedly - why? - it's not as though I have vampire fangs only on one side; some that made me look older or fatter or both than I'd wish (of course).   My favorite is a product of arty dissatisfaction with the lot of them - in other words, rephotographing an image off my computer using Hipstamatic - but I'm not sure it'll entirely be appropriate for every circumstance.  At least this one, below, gives a sense of the view from our top deck, too - as well as what I hope may, at least for some occasions, pass for some kind of official look - even if I do have a slightly shifty, quizzical glare in the direction of the apparatus at the end of my arm.