Yearbook Photos

Several times in my life, life as I know it has been handed back to me on a platter, after I all but gave up. This tells of one of those times. I wrote this shortly after my 20 year high school reunion (whose formal event the drama guild crashed - but that's another story entirely.) Most people who knew me in high school would never believe that I almost didn't apply for my yearbook photographer position.

As an adult, I spent three years supervising an elementary school yearbook, and I handed the kids disposable cameras. I wanted the book to reflect the way they saw the school, even if that meant a few blurry photos. I had them interview others and write stories. The book needed to be theirs, not mine. I'd already had the yearbook experience.

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When I started high school, there were two things I wanted desperately to do. One was be a member of the drama guild. I felt I'd accomplished that as a freshman, the first time my name appeared in a program, and, almost better, in the school paper's article about the show.

The second was to be a yearbook photographer. My camera was my most prized possession, and I felt (and still feel) that the unphotographed life is hardly worth living.

I spent hours looking through my sister's yearbooks. I knew them better than she did. I examined, critiqued, memorized. Yearbooks were almost magical to me. I wanted so badly to have a role in publishing one.

By the time I was a sophomore, I'd almost given up on this dream. I owned only a 110 camera. I was quite skilled with it, and took lovely photos, but it was still just a point and shoot snapshot camera. I couldn't imagine using it for yearbook work. I watched the school photographers, and they all had expensive 35mm equipment, camera bags and long lenses. I could not imagine our family's budget covering such things, even though I was the only child left at home.

Fate intervened. Our drama guild adviser came to me one day, asking if I'd share any photos of our last production with the yearbook adviser. Apparently, the school photographer had only a couple of useable images from the time he'd spent shooting the show, and he refused to come back. Someone had either offended him or he hated the show or some such thing; I don't recall. Word had gone around the teacher's lounge that a drama student took photos of every production, and the yearbook adviser wondered if they could use some.

For every show, I took character portraits of every actor in full costume and makeup, backstage or in the hallway outside of the theater. I also took a group photo of the cast, tried to get a group photo of the crew, and occasionally shots of the actual performance (although I was usually too busy working to do that.) I went home and sorted through my photos of "Dracula's Wives," agonizing over whether they'd be good enough and absolutely giddy at the prospect of them appearing in the yearbook.

I met with the yearbook adviser, more nervous than I'd ever be on any job interview. I handed her an envelope of photos, and she looked through them saying, "Oh, these'll be great! This is exactly what I was hoping for." I glowed. She'd asked for four or five photos, I think. I know they used three.

A few weeks later I ran into the same teacher in the hallway. I was still amazed that she recognized me. "Do you have any other photos of students?" she asked. "Sure, lots," I told her.

"Are they as good as the ones you already gave me?"

"Well, some of them are."

"Could you put some together for me to look at? We're always looking for candids to use in the book."

Wow! A chance to have more photos in the book! And I could choose photos of my friends! I didn't want to be greedy, or overwhelm her, so I went through all my photos and picked out about a dozen. I thought they represented some of my best work, too – nice, clear, evocative photos, with one or two people in each. I added a scenic photo for consideration for the end pages, where all the "thank yous" and such were listed.

A few weeks later the yearbook adviser stopped me in the hall again. Taking hold of my arms, she looked me right in the eye and said, "TAKE YEARBOOK next year!" I was absolutely on Cloud 9.

I was sure my application would be denied, anyway. The current staff had to approve any new staff members, and the yearbook staff was always made up primarily of the beautiful and the popular. Maybe, I thought, maybe they'd approve me, since I wanted to be a photographer and they'd already seen my photos. Plus, the adviser would surely put in a good word, I hoped. I was amazed and delighted when I received the letter that began, "Congratulations! You've been chosen…"

When the yearbooks came out I tore through mine, amazed to find that, except for the scenic photo, they'd used every single one that I'd given them. Suddenly, I was no longer afraid of being greedy or taking advantage – I wished I'd given her at least twice as many.

I wonder what my poor mother thought when I announced, "I've been accepted to the yearbook staff. I'll need a 35mm camera." Such a thing was not in our budget. My mother is resourceful, though, and always tried to be supportive. On my birthday, I received my first 35mm camera. It was made by Fuji, and was not an SLR – a camera that accommodated lens changes. It had a single, attached lens. It was not a point-and-shoot, either. It was not only much classier looking, a bonus for me, but you had to dial in the focus and film speed. It had only a few focus settings: one for 3 feet, one for 5 feet, one for 10 feet and one for 20 feet to "infinity." It came with a shoulder strap, detachable if you so chose. The film speed dial had all the common speeds on it, plus a default setting if you used Fuji film. Then, I guess, the camera could read the film and tell what speed it was. I loved that camera. Even today I remember what it looked like, felt like, smelled like – how to load it, how it sounded when it was rewinding. As with all important possessions, I polled my friends – "What should his name be?" I tend to assume that most devices are male. In short order, he was christened "Chester." "Because he hangs on your chest," someone offered. He and I became inseparable.

I ended up on both the yearbook and newspaper staffs for my junior and senior years. There wasn't too much staff overlap except for the photographers. Not many people, apparently, did what we did.

I freely admitted, even on my first assignments, to bias in choosing my subjects. I wanted to take photos of people no one else photographed. Yearbooks seemed to be full of the same faces, over and over. My sophomore yearbook had beautiful photos and a lovely layout, but even more than usual, you saw the same faces over and over. If your face is on half a dozen organization pages, plus sprinkled through the activities pages, really, did there need to be two or three candids of you in the classes and index as well?

My top three priorities were to shoot the theater department kids, the kids I went to church with, and then kids who were total strangers to me. I scanned crowds for faces I didn't recognize in the slightest. Short baby faced freshman, disenchanted smokers, the geeky, uncool kids – they were all favorite subjects of mine. There were approximately 2,000 kids in our school; I thought the book should reflect that.

Since the photographers didn't get to do any of the actual layout, I knew that having these photos used depended on the whims of the rest of the staff. Still, more often than not, if I took it, they'd use it. Sometimes their choices surprised me.

Back then color pages were expensive and therefore rare. Every year they were allotted with great care. It was a big deal to have a color photo in the yearbook. One year, our winter homecoming received color pages. When I was sent to photograph the game, I took all the requisite photos – the floats, the crowning of the homecoming queen, the scoreboard with a final score of us, 49, them, 6. I also took a photo of the ROTC Color Guard presenting the flags. On the high school social ladder, well, the ROTC members weren't very high. Plus, their uniforms were black and white – not the standard choice for an expensive color photo. Still, the flags were colorful, and I felt the ROTC members needed their photo taken more than we needed another photo of, say, the cheerleaders. Cheerleader photos were not scarce. I was pleased when that photo was not only used, but was the second largest photo on the pages, captioned, "Our awesome ROTC Color Guard."

I was also proud of a color candid that made it into the book's opening sequence. It shows two girls laughing – real laughs, not self-conscious giggles. One girl is wearing a shirt advertising a group called the Circle Jerks. This was not a mainstream group, nor was she a popular kid. I was proud of that photo because it is the only time the girl's name or face appeared in the book. It undoubtedly meant more to me than it did to her. She did not get a school photo taken, did not join any clubs, and probably would have been happy to be left out of the book. I was not OK with that. Her friends wanted a photo of her, I was sure, but I also wanted a concrete record of her for the rest of us. I wanted her there, in our faces, reminding us that she existed.

That was the same reason I photographed the kids in wheelchairs. Every assembly, the kids in wheelchairs would be parked in the same spot, on the ground by the gym doors. Some were special ed kids with learning disabilities, and some were simply not able bodied. Even though we all saw them there, at every assembly, I had never seen a candid photo of them in the yearbook. So, I took one. The girl who used it cropped one boy out of it. He had poor muscle tone and drooped in his chair, his mouth open, his hands clawed. He just looked a bit too different for most adolescent levels of comfort. I was upset that she'd cut him out, but glad that she'd used the photo. It was a way of saying that the kids in the wheelchairs were "normal," like the rest of us.

During my senior year, the yearbook editor decided that she wanted all photo captions to include the names of the people in the photo, unless it was a crowd shot – the bleachers during a game, or the parking lot after school. I agreed completely with this plan. It was frustrating to students when the index did not list every photo they were in. The index only listed pages where your name appeared, not necessarily where your face appeared. Some of the kids on the staff were not thrilled by the new policy. They wanted to think of funny captions, and would rather caption a photo, "Check out those pecs!" than, "John Doe shows off his pecs." The compromise worked well, I thought; the caption would read, "Check out those pecs! (John Doe.)"

Still, we occasionally ran into trouble when a staff member wanted to use a photo and none of us knew the name of the subject. Our adviser wanted strict secrecy about the book's contents, so no one outside the staff was supposed to know what photos were used or what the pages looked like. Sometimes, the secrecy extended even to other staff members; for instance, none of us ever knew what the cover looked like until the book came out. Trying to find the name of an unknown student while still maintaining utmost secrecy was nerve wracking. More than once I was asked, "Why can't you take pictures this good of people we'll recognize?" My pat answer was, "They (the students we didn't recognize) go here, too."

I didn't realize how often I'd actually said it until my senior year, when I was trying to help our editor identify a freshman girl for the homecoming pages. We knew she was a freshman because she was dressed as a clown. On one particular day of homecoming week, all the freshmen dressed as clowns, while the other classes had their own costumes. It was a good photo and a great costume, but nobody seemed able to identify her. The hat and makeup just made it harder. The poor editor was ready to tear her hair out. "I really like this photo, and I really want to use it, but I don't think I can unless we can find out who she is." In total frustration, she said to me, "Weren't there any good costumes on freshmen that you knew?" I don't think I'd even opened my mouth to answer before she said, "I know, I know, she's a student here, too." She eventually found a teacher who identified our clown as a Julie Brown, and the photo went into the book.

I honed a fairly "in-your-face" sensibility during high school – if I was going to do something wrong or open to judgment, I was going to do it loudly and in the open. I made my best friend crazy by not trying to hide the incessant notes we passed from our teacher. "I'm in the front row! Besides, she knows we're doing it," I'd tell her. I also made no apology for having the kids from the theater department appear over and over in my photos. Hey, at least I knew their names!

Sometimes I'd be accused of playing favorites even when I'd tried hard not to. One year I shot an entire roll of film on the soccer team, with only two photos being of my friend Andy. Out of four photos chosen for the soccer page, two were of Andy. I explained that to someone who'd been giving Andy a bad time about it, and he snorted. "Of course they used those two! You made sure they were the best ones!" I hadn't; those choices were a fluke, as far as I knew.

Photographing my friends started from a bit of a grudge. In all of my sister's yearbooks, the drama guild was allotted two pages. The year she graduated was the last year on staff for the drama teacher known for big, splashy, very popular musicals. I started school the next fall, and when yearbooks came out that spring I was disappointed to find that the drama guild had been given a single page. The next year, we were given a single page again. I still have the note my sophomore self wrote to my best friend after I found out I'd been accepted to the staff – "If they're not going to give us our two pages, I'm going to splash us all over the book!" "Us" meant any of the kids from the drama department: usually not me; I was, after all, behind the camera.

When I made the staff, I asked the adviser why she'd made the change to only one page for us. "We decide that by how many members an organization has," she explained. I found that to be a completely unconvincing argument. "Then why do the cheerleaders get two page spreads? There's only six girls in the whole squad! We have over 30 members!" I wasn't happy with that answer, either – "They represent the school." I learned to love the woman I had for two class periods a day and faced many deadlines with, but I still think she had a blind spot.

When someone specifically asked me to take their photo, I often did, but I also frequently explained that having it taken didn't guarantee that it would be used. Very rarely, though, I knew I could guarantee a photo would be used.

When I was a senior, my friend Allan asked if I could make sure to take a photo of him during a soccer game. "I've been on the team for four years now, and there's never been a photo of me on the soccer pages." I told him that I'd be sure to take some. Then, I received a request from the sports editor. "I'm doing a collage page for fall sports, and another for spring sports. I need a photo of each of the sports, and the fall ones have to be in color. I've got lots of color football pictures, and I've got most of the others, but I don't have any for soccer. Could you take a color soccer photo for me?" Could I!

I explained the request to Allan, breaking the yearbook code of silence. "It won't be on the soccer page, but it'll be in color. Are you interested?" He was. So, we arranged a day for him to meet me in uniform, and I'd photograph him kicking a ball around the school field. If he was the only one I photographed, he was guaranteed a color spot in the book.

I was a bit worried about the shoot. My camera had been stolen – an ugly story in itself – and I had to borrow cameras or make due with my mother's point-and-shoot camera until mine was replaced. For the soccer photos, all I had was my mom's point and shoot camera. I don't think she'd even bought it; I think it came free with some other purchase. Even with my camera, sports photos were tricky for me. I had no zoom, and therefore no ability to zero in on the field, whether it was a baseball diamond, track or football field. Without the ability to adjust shutter speed, I had to depend on the film speed to compensate for motion in the subject. In short, I had to work hard, and depend on quite a bit of luck, to get decent sports photos. I figured that I'd at least be able to move in close on Allan, since I didn't have to stay on the sidelines or worry about other players. Since we were shooting on the baseball outfield, not the soccer field (our school didn't have their own; we used a public field several miles away), we wanted as much of the background cut out as possible.

I took about a dozen photos, more than I normally would have if I'd been using my own equipment. We had a bit of time before the deadline, so if the little cheapy camera didn't do a decent enough job, I figured, I could borrow a camera and reshoot. The photo editor liked the photos, though, and chose a dynamic close up of Allan for the collage. I'm panning as I follow him across the field, so the background's slightly blurred and it looks as though he's really rushing the ball, instead of slowly kicking it around by himself.

Allan signed on that page in every yearbook he was asked to sign. In mine, there's a small footnote beneath the shot – "good photo, Sharon."

As a bonus, the newspaper chose another of the photos to illustrate a story about the soccer team. He's identified in the caption by name, Allan Steinberg. I was delighted that our little photo op gained him double coverage.

I was even happier after it turned out that he wasn't featured on the soccer page at all that year. The varsity soccer photo that year is an informal shot of the team members at the school, not in uniform on the field. Allan had to be somewhere else when it was shot (I didn't take that one) and wasn't too happy about missing it. Knowing he was in the book anyway took some of the sting out.

I always hoped that my photos would help all the students, not just a few, remember their time in high school. At my 20 year reunion, I saw that maybe I'd been able to accomplish that. The reunion planner made a poster to display at the informal picnic during the reunion weekend. To my surprise, every one of the photos was mine. There's a good chance that none of them are the photos I would have chosen if I'd created the poster. Knowing that I'd captured somebody's fondest memories felt good – even if, or maybe because, they were much different than my fondest memories.

It really is just me, isn't it?

I found myself feeling isolated at a wedding reception not too long ago, unsure of what to do about it except perhaps monopolize the restroom.

I only knew two people there, my husband and the groom. Well, OK, I knew my children as well, and was considering planting myself in the midst of the attendant children, parked in front of a TV.

The party had divided very strictly along gender lines. It was being held at the home of the newlyweds, and all the men were in the garage. All of the women were in the kitchen. The children were in the living room. I ping-ponged between the three rooms, feeling rudderless and unsure.

I am not normally comfortable in gatherings of women, even women I know. All those cliches I resented when growing up seem to manifest themselves.

Growing up, I resented most of the stereotypes about women – that they're catty and back stabbing, obsessed with shoes, competitive. I wasn't any of those things, and I was female. Therefore, went my flawed, syllogistic reasoning, other women aren't either. Yet the older I got, and the more time I spent in single gender gatherings, the more I had to concede that a great many females were.

The women at the reception tried to include me in the conversation, but almost all of them were friends of the bride, whom I'd never before met, so I was already outside the group. I also had very little to contribute to the topics of conversation. There was a great deal of discussion about the best place to get your nails done, the best stylists to ask for, the best procedures to have. Since I have never had a professional manicure in my life, and don't plan to ever have one, all I could do was look interested and smile. At that point, volunteering that information, and the fact that I'd rather have unanesthetized dental work than a pedicure, would have gone beyond "out of place" to "downright rude."

Wandering out into the garage to talk to the men provided no solace. Normally, I get along with men better than I do with women. Here, not only did it stand out that I was the only female, and probably as such defiling the workshop where the groom tinkered with his cars, but I had even less to contribute to that conversation.

"My Chevy's worth ten of your Ford."

"My Ford's twice as fast as your Dodge."

"My Dodge eats Chevys for breakfast."

It was ridiculous. There is no place for me in a conversation consisting entirely of male posturing and brand loyalty.

In the living room, where I frequently went to "check on my kids, and make sure they're behaving," the children wondered why I, an adult, was in their space at all. My kids wished I'd be like the other kids' parents and leave them to their own devices.

You can only go to the bathroom so often, and I'd already admired all the artwork on the walls. It was just excruciating. I don't drink, and I wasn't working. Normally, I'm taking photos during any wedding receptions I attend, but there was no camera to be a safety blanket. The food wasn't ready to eat yet, and I wasn't one of those preparing it, so I had to find some way to bide my time while I tried in vain to become invisible. I've been working on that since childhood, but having no success.

I was always a deep and fervent believer in the idea that people are basically the same. Part of that is just my nature, and part of it is my tendency to be extremely literal. How many times, and in how many ways, have you heard the message that, despite any differences, we're all the same inside? Exactly. I took those statements at absolute face value.

Women tend, too, to espouse the idea of universal sisterhood, the idea that no one can understand a woman like another woman can. That makes sense, doesn't it? For instance, my husband will never be able to accurately imagine what menstrual periods are like, let alone childbirth or nursing. And yet, I continually find myself feeling very alone and alien indeed when surrounded by women.

I was recently sitting with a group of women planning an event together. One woman was describing her disappointment while working with another group, planning a luncheon. "And I asked one woman to make potato salad, and she went out and bought an Albertson's potato salad." (You have to imagine the tone of voice here; it was the same as if she'd said, "…and she brought a bowl of mouse droppings.") "I mean, can you imagine? I specifically asked her if she could make something! If that's the kind of luncheon I wanted, I could have gone down to Albertson's myself and bought something."

It reminded me of the outrage my sister in law displayed after attending a wedding reception. There was apparently a hullabaloo over the serving of some cookies. Several women had volunteered to make cookies for the reception, but once there, great bickering ensued over whose cookies went where and most especially, which ones were served first. "The cookies she made were so much more consistent in size and color, but they had to put this other woman's cookies out there first." (Imagine, again, that mouse dropping tone of voice.) "So her cookies were left sitting in the kitchen, where no one could see them, while these other ones went out on the table…" She was truly angry about the whole thing.

I simply cannot imagine any circumstance in which I would be concerned about these things. No one was under any kind of obligation here; if they brought something, you ought to be grateful. You serve it with a smile. If you personally don't like it, don't eat it. If you don't want a deli container on the table, dump the food into a china bowl before you serve it. What if the woman who bought potato salad did it because she's a terrible cook? I cannot fathom being angry or worked up about it in any way. Among women, that puts me squarely in the minority.

Maybe part of the fact that I can't get worked up about shoes, a frequent female point of conversation, is my feet themselves. I have wide feet, large bunions and fallen arches. I can't walk around in little slip of nothing sandals unless I want to be in pain for a couple of days afterward. Ditto for heels of any height. I need practically orthopedic footwear, so I'm not going to be a fashion plate in this area. Truth be told, though, I am not a fashion plate in any area, so if I had perfect feet I might still wear frumpy shoes. If I had my way, aside from special purpose footwear – snow boots, water shoes – I'd only own three or four other pairs. Instead, I find myself owning a dozen or so and feeling aggrieved that I can't wear the comfortable shoes with the dressy clothing, or the white shoes with the black pants.

           I was cast as a nursing home resident in a play produced at a local community theater when I was 35. Community theaters generally run on small to tiny budgets, so I had to bring in most of my own costumes. I borrowed my mother's clothes, since she's roughly my size and was the same age as my character, but I wore all my own shoes. Other women could not believe it, and certainly could not believe that I would admit it. I was left thinking, "They're loafers, for crying out loud. What's wrong with loafers?"

You'd think that childbirth would be an area in which most women can agree. No-o-o-o. Since I've also had both natural childbirth and Cesarean sections, you would think that my ability to relate to other women would increase. You'd be wrong.

I was discussing having my first child with a friend of mine. I told her that the hardest part was going 26 ½ hours without sleep. "There's nothing quite so exhausting as watching the sun come up knowing that you haven't had any sleep and there's still a lot of work ahead."

"Oh, I know what you mean," she said. "Then you start feeling like you're a total failure, like even your body doesn't work right, like you can't accomplish a simple little thing women have been doing for millions of years."

I know I should have just agreed with her. But, it had never occurred to me to view the experience that way. I was taken totally by surprise and my penchant for total disclosure, no matter what, reared its head. "Well, no. I felt sleepy and upset that there was no sleep on the immediate horizon." She thought I was both lying and belittling her. I thought she was oversensitive and slightly bizarre. It was not a female bonding experience.

Having had three emergency C sections after that, I cannot relate to women who choose to have them. I've heard all the reasons – you get to choose the baby's birthday, you get to choose the time of day, you get to avoid labor and any of its complications. There's subsets to each of those reasons that I could name as well. I still disagree. Not only would I never choose to have major surgery if there was a way to avoid it, the recovery between the two births is a no contest. After my first delivery, I was out of the hospital within hours, and I went shopping with my sisters in law that afternoon. After my first Cesarean, I was on a morphine drip for 3 days. Sneezing was agony, and just getting to the toilet was an ordeal. When I finally left the house almost two weeks after going home, I nearly passed out in the grocery store.

I also hate the required hospital stay. Having had emergency situations, I understand why it's safer to be in a hospital than at home. Still, after the baby's here and fine, I want to go home. I want to sleep in my own bed. I want to nurse on my couch. I want to be surrounded by my family, not hospital staff. No matter how nice they are, they're not my family. These are more feelings that I've discovered are better left unshared. The majority of women I've discussed this with felt that they needed more time in the hospital. They were upset that hospital policy or their insurance wanted to release them before they were ready to go. One friend of mine insisted on staying for 5 days after her natural delivery, and paying for it herself since her insurance wouldn't. "Can you imagine that they wanted to send me home after only 12 hours?" she asked in outrage. I simply cannot relate. That sounded ideal to me. After my last delivery, another Cesarean, I started asking as soon as I woke up, "When can I go home?" They were overly patient while giving me the speech about how I had to wait for at least 24 hours. "So, at 25 hours I can go home?" I pressed. The nurses were unamused.

And so, I have yet again nothing to say when I'm in a group of women saying things like, "I love the hospital! You get to lay in bed and watch TV all day, they cook for you, they clean up, and somebody else gets to take care of your kids." I'm also one of the few women I know who insisted on "rooming in," having the baby in their room. With my oldest, I took everyone's advice and had her taken to the hospital nursery. Never again. I was absolutely fierce about the babies coming with me after that. I cannot relate when women say, "I loved it when they took him/her to the nursery." So, I stand in these groups and smile and say nothing. Or, if asked directly, I give my opinion and leave everyone else thinking that I'm just being contrary, probably to get attention, or that I'm alien somehow.

Maybe it's because I'm a photographer, but I'm also at a loss when I watch people get literally hysterical over what someone will be wearing for a photograph. I remember being in school and listening to peers relate stories in which a parent said, "You are not wearing that!" or, "I am not sending photos out to all your relatives with you looking like that!" The funny thing to me was not that they were vetoing an outfit or hairstyle on its merits alone. These were things the kids wore to school all the time. Where their parents drew the line was not in owning it or wearing it in public. They saved their ire specifically for being photographed in it. I thought that was odd. I still do.

Now, of course, I'm the parent. I still don't understand.

Years ago, we went over to my sister in law's house to take family photos. While several family members got ready, my ten year old niece asked if she could do my daughters' hair. At five and six years old, they were delighted by the idea. Their cousin was a glamorous big kid offering to spend time with them. Plus, they'd get to feel pretty. They were happy, I was happy, my niece was happy. Off they went, and she fussed and jabbered like a veteran hairdresser.

My sisters in law were appalled. "You're letting Nicole do their hair?" Well… yeah. They thought this was the worst idea they'd heard in a long time, and couldn't believe that they couldn't talk me out of it.

The photos are darling. Both my girls are beaming. If you look very closely, you can see some visible bobby pins in their hair. Big deal.

As a photographer, I've watched people argue until they are in tears about what will or won't be worn in a photo. Senior portraits are a prime breeding ground for that kind of strong feelings. I usually intercede and suggest some in the child's favorite clothes and makeup, and some in the mother's favorite (it's almost always Mom who has issues.) That usually works. Still, no matter how often I see it, I'm a bit puzzled. My mother said nothing to me about what I wore for my senior portraits, and I said nothing to my daughters about what they wore. My usual standards applied – is it clean, weather appropriate, modest? OK then.

Once, a client asked me what her daughter should wear for her senior portraits. Intending to explain that I didn't think the photos were about the clothes I said, "Well, one of my daughters wore a T-shirt and jeans."

"Oh!" she gasped. "I would never tell my daughter that. She'd actually wear a T-shirt!"

I am not mortified when someone sees the dust bunnies at my house. Everyone has them. I do not need a new outfit for special occasions. I do not need to receive flowers. My husband has sent me flowers exactly twice in over 20 years, and I'm OK with that. I do not like expensive jewelry. I've told my husband repeatedly that if he ever feels like spending that kind of money on me, he can take me on a trip.

Getting hysterically possessive about your purse or wallet doesn't make sense to me, either. Of course, my kids have to ask before they go into my purse to get gum or money, but that's a matter of common courtesy. If my husband's taken cash out of my wallet I want him to tell me so I know where it went, and also so I don't get stuck at a checkout counter somewhere without any money. Again, courtesy. I don't understand a total hands off approach.

Years ago, when I was in a local play, this attitude was challenged. In the dressing room during the show one night, one of the actresses asked if anyone had change for a dollar so she could use the vending machine. Several people said no, so I said, "I do, but I've got to go onstage. My purse is on the back of my chair. Go ahead and get my wallet out; just be careful, because my wedding ring's in the change compartment. Don't drop it."

She was astounded. "I couldn't get into your purse!"

"Sure you can. You don't want to wait until I get back, and I've got to go. The scene's almost over."

"I can't! I can't just go in your purse!"

             I was getting exasperated. "Gretchen! I've got to go! If anything's missing, I'll blame you, OK?"

It was not OK. I had to risk missing my cue because she wouldn't touch my purse. I found it very odd.

So, I find myself rattling around group functions, smiling and wanting to leave. I can't imagine what to say to people that I don't know. I have a hard enough time with people I do know.

It got a bit better at the gender divided reception when the food was served. Then, I had something to do. Still, I was glad when the reception was over and we could all go home. It took a long time for the muscles in my back to unclench, though.

Legal Definitions

This is another sample column I wrote while applying for a newspaper job. I've expanded upon it because 600 words weren't enough to avoid confusion.

For the record, because people frequently ask me, yes, I am aware that most people, including most of my friends and relatives, do not agree with me. I don't understand why that matters so much to some people. I want to ask them if they only accept people who agree with them completely into their lives. I always thought that the point of communication was to understand each other, not to assure that everyone agrees. I don't attempt to be contrary for its own sake, but I'm not affronted if differing opinions exist among my loved ones - because, let's face it, there will be dissent.

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On several occasions, I've read eloquently written opinions that lay out supposed persecution based on sexual preference. They quote instances in the Bible, and lifestyles throughout history, to show that their lifestyle has "always" existed, and was often accepted or even encouraged. People insist that it is ignorance, prejudice or squeamishness that causes others to avoid embracing this lifestyle as acceptable.

They tell heartfelt and tearful stories of the stress of "hiding our love" from others. "How can loving someone be wrong?" they ask. They are sure that the stress and shame they cope with are the result of not being accepted by their friends, family or peers. They speak longingly of the day when they can "celebrate" their relationships openly.

These opinions have not been written by homosexuals. They have been written by pedophiles. One recent advocate (who literally wrote a book on the subject) complained that the word "pedophile" should not be viewed in a negative light, "because it literally means 'child lover.' " A few of these opinions have been written by proponents of incest. Mackenzie Phillips described their mindset well: "My father had a lot of love and no boundaries."

Because I've had people ask me how homosexuality and pedophilia are related, here's the best way I can describe why I'm comparing them at all. Both are lifestyles that include sexual behavior that others find off-putting, but the practitioners wish was accepted by everyone.

I'm not talking about predatory behavior. I'm talking about the Jerry Lee Lewises and the Mary Kay Letorneaus, monogamous, heterosexual people whose partner was underage. Predators are a different category altogether, and are unfortunately very equal opportunity. They don't enter into my discussion here.

With both fictional and real life polygamists on TV, there have been rumblings that any consensual sexual behavior should not be illegal. "It doesn't hurt anyone. Just let them be."

There are those who feel that putting any limits on any sexual behavior is wrong and repressive.

This is why I oppose changing marriage laws to accommodate homosexual marriage. I am squarely in favor of some kind of domestic partnership law that provides insurance, inheritance, parenting, community property and other rights to those who wish to have those legal provisions. I think it should provide identical benefits to marriage. I think it should be available to anyone in a romantic or a non-romantic relationship, widowed siblings sharing a home, or anyone else who wants it. To me, this is not about who you're sleeping with, or why.

When I was growing up, gay activists said, "We just want the benefits everyone else gets." Now, when someone says, "OK, here's the benefits," they're told, "It's not enough. It has to be called a marriage, or it's discriminatory."

I'm unclear as to how, exactly, marriage laws are considered discriminatory when they apply to heterosexuals as well. Heterosexuals can live together, have children together, buy property together, but if they haven't fulfilled the legal requirements of a marriage, they don't get the legal benefits.

It is a bad idea to say that, from a legal standpoint, any sexual relationship is as legitimate as any other. It opens up the proverbial can of worms, and takes us down roads we really should not travel. Once we have decided that any relationship between consenting adults is legitimate, it's a small step to deciding that forbidding such relationships on the basis of age or genetics is discriminatory. Once that happens, someone will argue that if one person consents, that's enough. It works for recording conversations, right?

Someone suggested to me that we should do away with all civil marriage laws, and make everyone, heterosexual or homosexual, apply for the same civil license and be granted the same civil legal union. Leave all matters of "marriage" to churches, and come up with something else for everyone not wishing to have a religious union. I could probably get behind that idea. That way, in theory, no one could feel discriminated against.

It's not a good idea, in my opinion, to change legal definitions, especially ones that have stood for centuries, because we think we've come up with a better idea, and for centuries, the one constant in marriage laws and practices has been that it is a male/female relationship, available to those who meet certain criteria.

Think about it deciding that the current system of legal definitions doesn't work. What about legal definitions of, say, ownership? It could be convincingly argued that it is impossible to truly own anything, that everything belongs to God or to the Earth, and we can, at best, borrow it. It can be argued that money is a flawed way to determine ownership, since it discriminates against those with less lucrative jobs and therefore, less money. It could even be argued that resources should be distributed by merit. Now think about turning such decisions over to the government, or even to a citizen community. Who decides the "merit?" Who distributes said resources? Doesn't that scare the bejeezus out of you? It should. It's hard to get even half a dozen reasonable people to agree on lunch, much less anything of sweeping importance. Add in influence, power, money and human nature, and I've gotta tell you, I don't want anyone deciding, for instance, that they "need" my house more than I do, because I have empty bedrooms, and then creating a legal way to take it from me.

At the risk of creating a firestorm of words, I think I need to address the fact that yes, my religion enters into this equation. I know, I know, many people will now dismiss what I have to say out of hand. The only time that irks me is if they expect me to listen to them, but feel no need to listen to me. Call it karma, call it The Golden Rule, call it whatever you want - if you expect civility and respect, GIVE civility and respect.

I do not believe that anyone is supposed to live a gay life. I also don't think anyone should smoke, drink, cheat on their taxes, be promiscuous, be dishonest in business - a host of different behaviors that are acceptable to larger or smaller segments of society. People often find that anywhere from eccentric to ignorant, but they don't get as up in arms as they do when sexual matters are involved.

I didn't quite understand why, a couple of decades ago, people found brain chemistry studies to prove that some people were just going to be gay, because of the chemical compounds in their brains. When someone is found to be schizophrenic, bi-polar, ADD, ADHD, diabetic or anything else involved with brain or body function, we don't say, "Well, since they're born that way, it's obviously a viable way to live their lives. We should allow them to embrace it. It's arrogance and ignorance to try to change it." We say, "This will keep you from reaching your full potential. Medication and counseling can help." But I'm supposed to accept that, because there are identifiable differences in the brains of gay people, it's something that should be embraced and encouraged.

My religion tells me that, in order to reach our full potential, everyone needs to be in a male/female partnership. If you discard religion, let me put it this way - there is no evolutionary purpose to same sex couples. It does not promote the survival of the species.

My religion teaches that having homosexual feelings is not wrong, but encouraging or acting on them is. It teaches the same thing about any number of other impulses - the urge to steal, to kill, to hurt others, to cheat, to be selfish. Having these thoughts is not wrong. It's part of being human.

Encouraging or acting on them is what makes them wrong. No one would say, "I am a murderer" because they wished the death of another person (who hasn't?), or, "I am a thief" because they thought about how simple or pleasurable it would be to steal something. It doesn't make sense to me to say, "I am gay" because you were attracted to someone of your own gender.

And the sexual behavior is the ONLY thing in a homosexual life not compatible with a heterosexual life. You always felt different? So did everyone else. You liked trucks but hated baby dolls? I spent my childhood climbing trees and fishing; I would rather have unanesthetized dental work than a mani-pedi. You always felt drawn to fashion? Good for you! Make beautiful clothes! You love someone deeply and want to share your life? Marvelous. I could take an hour and name all the people I love deeply and truly, people I want to be around every day through my whole life, people I miss when they are gone, people who are in my head when we're apart, people I adore, starting with my family. I am only having sex with one of them. That's as it should be.

So, if I believed that all relationships were the same, I would fiercely fight to see them treated that way; but I don't, so - I don't. If you took religion out of the equation, I might feel differently. I'll never know, because I can't in good conscience remove it.

I know how and why people disagree with me. I have even occasionally found someone who said, "I just can't be friends with someone whose ideas I find offensive and immoral." I wonder if they stop to think that I have been their friend, and was willing to remain so, even though I found their ideas to be offensive and immoral?

On that note, a huge and hearfelt THANKS to everyone who loves me, and I them, despite disagreeing; those wonderful people in my life who can and do share their opinions and hear mine. That's the best of human nature.

Daddy Get Your Gun

The two following stories about my dad have reached the status of family legend. Mortifying when they happened, in retrospect they're now wildly entertaining. If in heaven we can watch things that happened on Earth as if we were watching a movie, I can see me, my dad, Joe and David all sitting together, laughing as we eat popcorn. (In heaven, popcorn tastes just they way it does at the movies, but it's good for you. I'm sure of it.) "Remember that?" we'll say. "Boy, that was funny!"

When I first told my friend Greg the story about the invitation to the midnight movie, and the ensuing chaos, he was 17. "Wow," he said. "Your parents are crazier than mine."

Let the record show that my mother has always been the calm at the center of the storm.

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As a kid, I always disliked playground blowhards. Everybody seems to have known at least one or two – the kids who say, "That's nothing; let me tell you my story," after a classmate has shared something, or who claim to be filthy rich, famous, the reincarnation of George Washington, or Mick Jagger's pen pal. Self aggrandizing people still annoy me, as do liars. I was also completely unable to relate to these kids, as my fondest wish in elementary school was to be invisible. Not super hero invisible, not fly on the wall invisible, but unnoticed and never singled out in any way.

It was therefore something of a shock to me every time someone thought I was making something up to get attention. I wasn't chatty and didn't have a lot of friends, but I wasn't a total recluse. I did talk to other kids. Every now and then someone would take exception to something I'd said, refusing to believe, for instance, my dad's age. "Your dad can't be that old! That's older than my grandpa!" It was very uncomfortable for me.

Occasionally I'd make a reference to one of our horses, thinking nothing of it. I knew most people didn't own horses, but we did, our neighbors did, and to me it was ordinary. Sometimes a classmate would ask me about them, wanting to know something, like where we kept them. "In the back yard" did not seem to be the answer they expected. So, I'd be called a liar.

We lived in an unusual area, considered unincorporated county land even though it was surrounded by city land. The houses there predated the city, and many used to be small ranches. When my parents bought the house, it was one of three houses on a dirt road, outside of town. Slowly, of course, the town encroached on them, and by the time I was in elementary school everything was vastly different - and, more crowded. Still, we and the other homeowners had different rules than the people even across the street from us. Nobody in our subdivision, which started with us and stretched out behind us, was on city sewers or garbage pickup. We had septic tanks and hauled our own trash to the dump. We also had more land than the average city lot. My parents had an acre and a third, as did the family next door. Some of the lots were still three or four acres. In our subdivision, it was legal to keep horses or other animals banned from city lots, and many of the families did. Behind our manicured back lawn was a horse pasture. When my older sister was in high school, it was her job to feed the horses every day before school.

But, since my house looked the same as virtually any other house from the street, and because it was common knowledge that you couldn't keep a horse in a typical suburban back yard, kids wasted no time in labeling me a teller of fibs when I said anything about our horses. One horse didn't even have an expected name – her name was Querida. (We pronounced it in such an Americanized manner that it was as unrecognizable to Spanish speakers as it was to English speakers.) It didn't get much better when someone who had been to my house, or who lived close to it, vouched for my truthfulness. Then I'd be peppered with questions like, "Do you ride them every day?" Well, no. I rarely rode them. Back when we were out "in the sticks," we would ride the horses fairly far afield. Everything was quiet dirt roads, ranches and open space. Riding a horse down a city street made much less sense, and riding around the pasture wasn't too exciting. Besides, I was young enough to need help saddling and unsaddling, and my parents were busy. None of this entered into a standard seven year old's fantasy of owning a horse, though, so the other kids thought I was very weird for owning a horse and not riding it every day. To add insult to injury, my parents had a firm policy of not letting visitors ride, so any classmate who asked, "Can I come over and ride?" was instantly disappointed.

At least I understood that owning a horse was cool. All kids are awed by horses. As I got older, people would think I was fishing for attention by relating things with a far smaller "cool" factor.

We lived on the northeast corner of an intersection. On the southwest corner of the intersection lived a family with several boys, the youngest of whom was my age. Another was my older sister's age. They were several strata above us in the school's social hierarchy, so we weren't close. I didn't think much about them. My dad apparently did, though.

We were never given an allowance. My parents decided on a case by case basis whether or not we needed money for something we wanted. When I was 14, I knew I was too young for a regular job, but I still wanted some discretionary funds. I pestered my mom about jobs I could do, eventually wearing her down to an agreement that I could do most of the watering in the yard for $2.50 a week.

The spigot for the hose was right under my bedroom window. My room was in front of the house, with two windows facing the street (to the west) and one facing the south. The faucet was under the south window. There was a narrow flower bed along the house, then a stone path before the lawn. To decently reach the faucet control, I had to step into the flower bed. It didn't hurt the plants any – the area around the faucet was empty specifically so a person could operate it easily.

One day, my dad found a sneaker print in the flower bed under my window. It was, naturally, pointed toward the house, not the walk. He came unglued. He became convinced that the boys across the street were all Peeping Toms, spending their time trying to catch a glimpse of his daughters. It was an adolescent sized shoe, he was sure.

Well, of course it was. It was mine. I told him that. I told him that repeatedly. He would have none of it. Those boys were dirty minded perverts, and he was going to give them what they had coming. I was mortified by the mental image of him barging in and confronting the family. I would just never live it down. I offered Dad my shoe, asking him to compare it to the print in the mud. He wouldn't. I pleaded with Mom to explain it to him, but he was steadfast in his belief of the household of Peeping Toms.

The way Dad decided to deal with this threat to his family was less obvious than confronting the neighbors, but no less mortifying. He decided that he would sleep outside on the patio, with a loaded shotgun, every night until he caught them. Then, with definitive proof, he would confront the family and call the police.

There was always at least one loaded gun in our house, the pistol in my dad's nightstand. Usually, there was a rifle or shotgun loaded as well. We all knew this. This was Dad's idea of home security. It's amazing that none of us ever touched them. The wrath of Dad was probably scarier than any damage we thought they might cause. Anyway, we left the guns alone.

Now, of course, Dad was in the back yard every night with one slung across his chest, like some awful hillbilly cartoon. It was ludicrous. In the morning, he would come in, put the shotgun up, and go about his business as though this was all perfectly normal. He didn't give up after a week or two, either. He was relentless. He was out there for literally months.

One night, my friend Kim wanted to spend the night at my house. By then, the spectacle of Dad was part of the fabric of life so much that it was only after I agreed and got permission from my mother that I realized – "She'll see Dad and the gun. Oh, no. She'll think he's nuts. He is nuts! This is so embarrassing." Making friends in junior high was tough enough. I didn't need scenarios guaranteed to sink my chances.

On Friday, the night of the sleepover, I took her aside at school to prepare her. I was absolutely humiliated to have someone else witness this craziness. I explained about the watering, the footprint, Dad and the gun. "So, when we say goodnight to my dad tonight, we have to go out on the back patio to say it. He's sleeping in the hammock. Just don't look at the gun and pretend it's all normal. OK?" She said she would.

That night, everything was pretty normal until it was time for us to go to sleep. We trooped outside to where Dad literally lay in wait in the shadows. "We're headed to bed now, Dad. Good night." He said good night, just as if he wasn't an armed sentry. We walked back across the back lawn for the door with me still humiliated. This was probably the most embarrassing thing I'd ever had to reveal to somebody. My friend seemed pretty freaked out about the whole episode.

When we got inside she said, "I didn't think he'd actually be back there. I thought you were kidding." Now it was my turn to freak out.

"You thought I was KIDDING? Why would I be kidding?"

"Well, I don't know," she said. "Maybe to impress me or something."

"IMPRESS you? Why would you be impressed because my dad's crazy?"

Kim was looking even more uncomfortable. "Well, I don't know. You know how people say things to impress other people." I stared at her like she was crazy, too.

I could not get over it. Why anyone would think that I was making up something incredibly embarrassing, something that I'd revealed only reluctantly, was absolutely beyond me.

If I was given to lying to impress people, I would have said that my dad was royalty. I would have said that we were next in line to rule some obscure European country. I would have said that he'd been a member of a 60's rock group, and had five gold records hidden in our closet. I would have said something that played to fairly universal childhood fantasies of money or prestige. I did not want the fact that he was delusional, armed and patrolling our yard ready to kill or maim the kid who sat across from me in math class to be true.

Eventually, cold weather forced Dad to abandon the patrol. He'd been at it for months by that time. Instead of believing it was folly to begin with, he was convinced that word of his vigil had spread, forcing the boys to give up their prowling. As if any of us had talked about it to the extent that word of his behavior could have spread.

Three years later, I still had not fully processed the reluctance others would have to take such pronouncements about fathers and guns literally.

Several of my closest friends in high school were male. It didn't make any difference to me what gender they were, but I knew that there were times when it would matter to my father.

I knew it was one of those times when Joe described what he and our friend David planned to do when David spent the night at Joe's house that night. "We'll come knock on your window at midnight, OK?" They had it all planned out – I'd crawl out my window and accompany them wherever they planned to go, then crawl back through before anyone was the wiser. They didn't have anything immoral or illegal planned, just late night movies or a trip to the 24 hour convenience store.

"No!" I had to tell them. "That's an incredibly bad idea!" Joe's room was also at the front of his house, facing the street. People frequently came and went through Joe's window instead of the door, (not necessarily to avoid his parents, but just because they could) so they couldn't see why it wouldn't work elsewhere. Even if I could squeeze out of my high, narrow window – a far cry from Joe's, a large window at almost ground level – it was still an extraordinarily bad idea.

"My dad will shoot you," I told them. Despite their attempts to change my mind, I kept repeating it to them. "No. My dad would kill you both." They knew how overprotective my dad was, so I was sure they understood that this was a real danger. No. They assumed it was a figure of speech.

I can understand thinking "kill" was a figure of speech. Kids, and for that matter, adults, use it that way all the time. But I was sure that the word "shoot" carried a different connotation, the way it would if I'd said, "stab" or "electrocute." I was sure that took things out of the realm of the figurative into the concrete. My dad was a hunter, a trap shooting coach, a gun collector, and Joe knew that. Surely he would understand what I was trying to say, I thought.

At midnight, they knocked on my window. I didn't hear them. They knocked again. And again. I still didn't wake up, but across the hall, my dad did.

He leapt out of bed, grabbed the loaded shotgun, and barreled out the front door. A terrified couple of boys took off down the street, with my dad chasing them and swearing. I slept through it all. I'm still sure that they only escaped bodily harm because they were young and scared, and Dad was old, slow and vision impaired. He ran after them for a couple of blocks, but lost sight of them.

He stormed back in the house still swearing, and waited up for at least an hour to see if they were coming back. I slept through it all. My mother told me the story the next morning. She knew who it was, but she wasn't about to let on to my dad.

I phoned Joe. "What were you thinking? I told you no! I told you my dad would shoot you!" And much to my amazement, Joe echoed the words I'd heard before.

"We thought you were kidding," he said.

"Why would I be kidding about a loaded firearm pointed at you? Why would I be kidding about your life ending?" I was just beside myself. I couldn't believe he hadn't believed me. I couldn't believe I'd slept through the whole thing. I couldn't believe how glad I was that my dad hadn't grabbed his glasses on the way out of the house.

"He could actually kill somebody that way, you know," Joe said indignantly.

"I know that! I know! I told you!"

Even over the phone, I was sure I knew what Joe's face looked like, with the wide eyes of disbelief. "Will you believe me next time?" I was getting shrill, imagining poor Joe and David lying dead in the street. It would take a while before the whole thing was funny.

I think Joe was afraid of my dad after that. I wouldn't blame him. I know poor David was.

Since I tend to be an extraordinarily literal person, I still assume others will take what I have to say at face value. I do try to be explicit. But if the past has taught me anything, it's that no one takes anything literally. What's a girl to do?

Through My Lens

There are reasons I don't generally join professional organizations. Even though my best friend laughs when I say I do not play well with others, there's something to that.

I occasionally read wedding magazines because I work in the industry. I need to see what's going on, what's popular, and what brides are being told. Otherwise, I would be caught off guard when a bride said something like, "In one word, how would you describe your style?"

We, my husband and I, try to shoot a mix of what's trendy now, and what will not look dated in 20 years.The classic stuff will always work, but working in what's popular right now will make people happy right now.

Some of the "Big Day Photo Checklists" and other info are quite useful. Some are not. I always find it amusing when there's an article about "What To Look For in a Photographer" or "What to Ask Your Photographer" written by photographers, not newlyweds. Often, those are filled with things like, "Ask what professional organizations they belong to. I belong to XYZ. Ask what their training is. I trained at ABC." I want to say, hey, ask couples what they liked or didn't like about their photos and their experience! This is not a commercial for you.

One of the most aggravating interviews I ever read was a photographer who said, "When people ask me how much I charge, I say, 'I'm the most expensive photographer in the tri-state area. Would you like to continue this conversation?' I'm worth it." Wow. I think I do amazing work, but I would never tie the quality of what I do to a price, and I like to think that I'm not an egotistical jerk.

Tonight, I opened a wedding magazine and flipped through. Although I've never had a bride ask for one, I'm aware that day after (or after reception) shoots with the bride and groom up to their knees (or higher) in surf are popular. They can look lovely. Ditto for freeze frames of the couple or wedding party jumping into a pool. I could not imagine someone asking for the shots one photographer put on their full page ad. In one, a soaking wet bride floated, arms spread and eyes closed, in an indeterminate body of water, with a few random branches poking out. They'd tweaked the color, so everything, including the bride's skin and white dress, were a gray-blue. It looked like a crime scene photo. It was ghastly.

Another shot showed a bride with a billowing train and hair, Photoshopped so it looked as if she was on fire. Yes, engulfed in leaping flames. As a standard portrait, it might be just what the client wanted, but as a wedding image? What does this photographer think about marriage? Who asked for these shots? It was ... there are no words.

I thought of this essay I wrote a few years ago. Although what got me writing was my frustration with society's eroding idea of what is and isn't beautiful, I think it also says something about why I take photos, and why I'm mentally framing them even when I'm not shooting - and why none of my bridal portraits look like they belong on CSI.

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It seems to me that a lot of people become photographers so they can take photos of beautiful people. This seems to be especially true of men, who hope to spend their days gazing at gorgeous women. If they're scantily clad women, all the better.

Some of the work of mine that I am proudest of is photos of people not generally considered to be gorgeous. Naturally, my husband and I also have beautiful photos of beautiful people. Some of our best work is of our nieces, and our nieces are stunning. It's easy to take photos of them that make people go, "Ooooh!" In fact, someone once asked my husband if I minded him doing the photo shoot of the sultry blonde by the waterfall, and he barked in answer, "Hey! That's my niece!"

I'm a very minimalist, naturalistic photographer. I want to use the least amount of equipment and time possible. I am not the kind of photographer who needs two assistants, a huge battery pack and lots of reflectors to do a shoot in the park. Occasionally I find myself wishing I had a reflector or a big, filtering drape, because it's possible to get gorgeous, soft light and minimal shadows that way. Without that kind of setup, I have to forgo particular locations because the sun isn't right. I'm sometimes annoyed by shadows under people's chins, but that's OK. I want to travel light, and I don't want to take all day setting up a simple head shot.

I also do not want to spend too much time after the photos are taken cropping, editing, Photoshopping. If I've done my job right, the photos don't need much. So, I tend to use Photoshop only for special effects – one of the most popular is colorized black and white. My husband is a wiz with the computer, and so is my daughter, so I usually just turn them loose.

It takes a lot more thought to pose your subject so they look their best, instead of just trimming their thighs in the computer. I'm not perfect, but I work hard at showcasing strengths. Sometimes, it's hard work. Some of it's simple stuff, like being higher than the subject's eye level in order to mitigate a double or receding chin. Sometimes it's as easy as simply believing that they're attractive.

I miss the days gone by when it was taken for granted that people were attractive. If you were entering a room full of people, it was assumed that all but a tiny percent were attractive. That was especially true of women – a room full of women was assumed to be a room full of beauty. Now, it's assumed that if you walk into a room full of women, a tiny percentage will be beautiful. Look at pinup photos from the 1950s or earlier. By today's standards, the women are overweight, flabby and plain. I happen to believe we have it wrong now, and we had it right then. All women are lovely, all men are handsome, with very few exceptions. Why have we come to believe that beauty is rare?

I hate it when I wear something and I receive compliments because "it's slenderizing." Can't I look good and be round? And don't even get me started on the current viciousness of criticizing photos of celebrities. "She's only 23 and has cellulite!" "She has no business wearing a bikini!" "Look at her without makeup!" I even hate it when it's supposed to be complimentary. I once saw a photo in a magazine of a movie star leaving the gym. "She doesn't use her workout as an excuse not to look good!" the caption said, going on to compliment her outfit. So people are supposed to feel bad if they work out in sweats and no makeup and get sweaty? Oh, my goodness! This is what happens to a society that has too much time and prosperity on its hands!

But I digress.

I once shot family photos for a young family celebrating the arrival of their second child. We shot outdoors in one of my favorite parks, and did several configurations, including shots of just the kids and just mom and dad. I was happy with most of the photos, and especially happy with one of the couple. They both looked happy and radiant. You would not have looked at this young mother and thought about the fatigue of delivery, about the fact that it had been less than a month since the birth and while her body was recovering she was enduring sleepless nights. You thought of love and happiness.

I saw this young mom a few weeks later at a Scout event. She made a point of telling me that she loved the photos. It turned out that my favorite shot of the couple was also her favorite. "My husband tells me all the time that I'm beautiful, but I never saw it until I looked at that photo. Then I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, I'm pretty,'" she said. That's a good day for me.

I very much enjoy shooting high school senior portraits. They're some of the most important photos taken of teenagers, and I want very much for them to be happy with the photos and the experience. Every one of them, and their parents, has a different idea of what that might be. I have some locations and poses that I use frequently, but every subject has to be approached as an individual. A lot of the portraits I shoot are of fresh scrubbed, well coifed girls surrounded by meadows and flowers, but I'm also good at grittier images, with pierced kids in black, against backdrops of concrete, chain link and grafitti. I try to make some images that will make parents and grandparents happy, some that make the teen happy, and hopefully some that will still be treasured years from now.

Everybody wants great photos, but not everybody looks like a model. Therefore, you can't proceed on the idea that you can only take great portraits of people who look like models.

A few years ago one of my senior portrait clients was a very large girl – she was not chubby or pudgy, she was much larger than my 250 lb. husband. She was also pleasant, had a lovely smile, was well dressed and impeccably groomed. Instead of deciding that the photos were going to be about a fat girl, I decided that they would be about a girl with a delightful smile and impeccable grooming. I placed her hands so that you could see her elaborate manicure in many of the photos. She was happy with them, no mean feat when society tells you that you're unacceptable, and I liked them so much that I included one in our first senior portrait brochure.

I've gotten much better over the years at wedding photos, and much more confident in my ability to do good work. Plus, the fact that I'm no longer processing film means that I can shoot more photos for less cost, which is a great thing. Still, one of the weddings I'm proudest of was shot almost two decades ago, and I wasn't paid for it – it was a favor for a friend.

The bride was very, very pregnant. She was due just a few weeks after the wedding. It was very obvious; there was no hiding it. It would never be possible to pretend that she wasn't pregnant at her wedding, even if it was advisable (and I don't think it was. With a few exceptions, revisionist history is a bad idea.) When the bride first emerged from the dressing room in her traditional floor length white gown and veil, her mother said, "Oh, Heather," in a tone of extreme disappointment and disapproval, as though she'd sold advertising space for a pig farm on her train.

OK, a very pregnant bride looks more like a bad punchline than a little girl's (or mother's) dream. But it was her wedding day, her first and, God willing, only wedding. She deserved to feel like a princess, and she needed beautiful portraits to hang on her wall, the same as any other bride. Clearly, so did her mom.

I can't guarantee feeling like a princess (though I can help), but I can do something about beautiful portraits.

For her bridal portraits, I shot them two ways, two ways that I shoot every bride. I shot close ups of her from the chest up. Then I had her face away from me. I spread her train out behind her and had her look back over her shoulder at me, with her bouquet perched on one hip. It's a great shot that highlights the dress, the veil, the hairdo, the flowers – everything that makes this day different. As I usually do, I also added her husband to that pose, with him standing in front of her just slightly off center with his hands on her waist, looking straight over her shoulder and into the camera.

Then, I shot the rest of the couple portraits as close ups, with the frame stopping just below her chest. Again, those are usually any couple's favorite poses anyway, and so this unconventional bride had lovely portraits that looked just like everyone else's. For the family photos, too, I tried to keep them waist up. In a lot of the photos, certainly the group and distance photos, you can see her tummy, but her mother would never be embarrassed with the portraits of her daughter or the couple hanging on her wall for all her friends to see.

I once saw photos of a casual wedding that had me squirming, wishing desperately that I had been the photographer. The bride and groom were both in blue jeans and tennis shoes, and the photo was full length. I immediately saw how I would have shot it. The bride, despite being in a casual shirt and jeans, had a traditional, flowing veil. It was obviously important to her and made her feel like a bride. She carried a bouquet. They were also standing on a riverbank, with all that lovely water behind them.

Quite often, one of a couple's favorite wedding portraits is the close up I usually take with their faces cheek to cheek. I frame it so that you rarely even see even the collar of the tuxedo; it's just two glowingly happy faces. Or I have the bride tuck her bouquet up just under their chins, so it's two faces over the flowers. That's how I would have shot that couple – close up, cheek to cheek, with her bouquet just under their faces and the river shining behind them. They would have had a lovely portrait that said, "Wedding!" loudly. I would have shot a portrait of just the bride the same way. I often take photos for brides who have spent a great deal of money on their dream gown (that they shopped for for months,) and their favorite bridal portrait is the close up with their flowers tucked right under their chins. You don't even see the gown, but it's a flattering portrait that immediately says, "Bride!", especially if she's wearing a veil. I wished I'd been able to give the bride on the riverbank those photos of her day.

Recently I photographed a bride who had none of the traditional trappings. She and her husband were planning a wedding almost a year in the future when circumstances intervened. Due to unexpected changes in their lives, the bride and groom had two days to plan a wedding. She wore a floor length gown, but it was one she already owned, navy blue with a short black jacket. Her hair was up, but it was the same style she wore daily. The groom wore a coat and tie he already owned. They had a sheet cake and no flowers. Still, they had all the feelings every couple has, and wanted a day just as special. They were surrounded by family and friends, they were happy, and they were getting married. They needed lovely photos.

For her close up, I had no flowers to highlight, no fancy hairdo, no tiara or veil. All I had was a bride with a wide, happy smile and her wedding ring. I had her lean on her left hand, with her elbow on a podium, with her fingers tucked under her chin. What you saw was her face and her ring. Hung on her wall, it would look like any other bridal portrait. After my husband filtered it, it looked even more romantic and, well, bridal.

Another of my favorite photos from their wedding was a close up of the couple's hands, rings prominent. I also very much liked the close ups of the hands signing the marriage certificate. They all said, "Wedding! Happy day!" Most importantly, the couple liked their photos. Their handmade thank you to us still hangs in our house.

A girlfriend of mine works for the state, working with families dealing with "special needs" children – those with physical or mental challenges, or both. She asked me to write an article for the organization's newsletter, with tips for photographing children. Some of it is pretty universal – fill the frame, eliminate distractions from the background, use a flash outdoors – but some was tailored to the audience. I didn't write about making the children look "normal," but how to get a flattering angle if your child couldn't sit up, or was in a wheelchair or brace, or drooled. I assumed that, just like all parents, they wanted photos that looked just like their child, but the best of their child. I never heard from the families, but my friend was delighted with the article, and that made me happy.

I became a photographer, not a painter, for a reason. I want a realistic image, not an idealized one. Even so, it would be a crime not to acknowledge the beauty inherent in God's creations. We need to see ourselves, and others, in our best light, in the middle of ordinary circumstances. That's what I try to do every time I push the shutter button.

Louis Who?

I do not understand designer purses. Truth be told, I don't understand designer anything, but purses seem particularly ridiculous. It's a bag. Its basic function could be performed by a grocery sack.

I never want to spend more than $10 on a purse, so I'm constantly disappointed. I only own one at a time - I cannot imagine a scenario that would induce me to switch my stuff from bag to bag. Somewhere, I own one of those "evening bags" that's just big enough for my keys, ID and Chapstick, but I don't know where it is and can't remember the last time I used it.

Recently, I carried a white canvas purse with blue Mickey and Minnie Mouse print and blue sequins on the handles. I got it on clearance for about $4 at the Disney Store, and I loved it. I never thought it was odd, but I guess other people did. One woman said to me, "I just knew you could pull off carrying something like that!" I still don't know if she was being sarcastic or not. I wasn't about to ask.

At my Rotary club one night, I was in charge of an evening of Dr. Seuss, with elementary school students reading to us. I'd left my stuff to mark my place, as usual, but needed to move to another table so I could make room for a guest to sit by one of our readers. As I bundled up my stuff, a tablemate asked, "Do you have permission to move that?"

"It's my stuff," I replied. My friend looked confused and said, "Oh. I thought it belonged to one of the kids." Um, nope - just mid forties me. He was puzzled. I was puzzled.

I finally replaced it (with a boring black purse) when the sequins started to fall off the handles. It's difficult enough trying to figure out the intricacies of human interaction without having to worry about whether or not my bag is business-suitable. I generally wouldn't worry, or even necessarily notice, if my attorney was in sweats, because his brain, ability, education and talent are still the same, but I keep hearing in my head things like the criticism leveled at the photographer for a wedding I attended - "I should have known the photos would be terrible when he showed up in those shoes."

I do not understand the concept of acessories (or clothing) as a status symbol. I honestly do not understand status symbols, period. I can grasp that in some circles such judgements are held to be deeply important, but I keep finding myself thinking, "Really? You honestly think there is some real kind of value or information attached to this?" You'd have an easier time convincing me of the accuracy of reading tea leaves.

My middle daughter's first job was at a fabric store. She's still better with a sewing machine than I am. She made most of the gifts she gave that year, and she made herself several pajama pants and blankets.

She had leftover flannel, blue with little penguins on it, from one of her pairs of pajamas. She decided to make herself a purse, an over the shoulder bag that was roomier than the purse she'd been carrying. I thought it was darling. She was happy. I didn't think much more about it. Then - cue the dramatic music - we went to southern California.

My daughter carried the purse through the amusement parks we visited. It was large enough to hold water bottles or souvenirs, which is nice. It didn't occur to me that it was different in any way from anyone else's purse, except that I think it's cool when people make things themselves. Then we rode a public shuttle.

One young, blonde, tanned female Californian sat near my daughter, glanced down at her purse, and visibly recoiled. She scooted as far away as she could and continued to stare at it, as though it was a rattlesnake and might strike. When we stood up to leave the shuttle, she clung to her boyfriend/husband and kept glancing back at the purse, obviously fearing that simply standing near it would somehow infect her. I am not trying to be colorful here - if anything, this is downplaying her obvious horror. As we hit the sidewalk, she shoved her significant other ahead and kept glancing back at the bag, as if she feared that it would follow her, bite her, and turn her into one of its kind forever.

This stands out all the more for me because I had an unusual experience on the same trip that left me thinking that Angelenos were remarkably blase'.

I had a severe allergic reaction to something. About eight o'clock at night, I felt something that could have been sand blowing into my eye. I went to the restroom and rinsed it out, but it didn't help. I rinsed it again, I dabbed it with a wet washcloth, but it still felt irritated. By bedtime, it was running like a faucet. I kept having to turn my pillow over all night long, in an effort to avoid the puddle under my face. By morning, my eye was swollen shut, and half of my face was huge and puffy, swollen beyond recognition. My pillow was soaked. When I pried my eye open, it was blood red. When closed, it looked like my eyeball had been replaced by a baseball or a citrus fruit. It was time to see a doctor.

This was, unfortunately, not the first (or last) time I'd need a doctor while on vacation. I knew how to find urgent care. The hotel informed me that the nearest facility that would accept walk-in tourists was just down the street at the hospital ER. I left my family swimming in the pool and walked down to the hospital.

I walked in the front door and the perky man behind the desk looked up and smiled. "Are you here to visit someone?" he asked.

I stared at him, trying to grasp this. Half my face was red and hugely swollen - I was walking around looking like a weepy John Merrick, mopping at the fluid leaking from my closed eye socket. For all he knew, I could be hugely contagious. I mean, I understand that you don't want health care professionals to be reactionary and panicky, but really, did it look like it was a good idea to let me loose on whatever ward to which I requested directions?

I decided to go with understated and factual. "No. I am in need of medical care."

"OK!" Mr. Perky said. "What seems to be the problem?"

I was dying to say, "I think my leg is broken." What does it LOOK like my problem is?

"My eye is swollen shut and weepy. The whole right side of my face is swollen."

"OK, you want the ER. It's around the corner to the left." Still smiling.

So, off to the ER I went. I was again asked, "So what brings you here today?" Could it be third degree burns, or a gash that needed stitching? Maybe it's rabies. I mean, GEEZ.

When I got in to see the doctor, I was prepared for the level of disconnect going on. After I explained, AGAIN, the doctor asked for more details and pried my eye open. "Do you think an insect might have stung you?"

"ON MY EYEBALL?"

"Yes."

Of course. "Wouldn't I have noticed?"

"Not necessarily."

He diagnosed it as an acute allergic reaction, cause unknown, and wrote me a prescription, delivered with directions to a pharmacy. So I wandered into Target, feeling ridiculous and conspicuous. Not a single person batted an eye. Not one - old, young, chic, tattered - NO ONE. I understand that people in huge urban areas have seen stuff that would make my hair curl, but I would have thought that the appearance of illness that could be contagious would cause some wariness. Maybe looking supremely unattractive in the land of starlets and rampant cosmetic surgery would raise eyebrows. Nope. I could have been rash covered and in a thong and no one would have given me a second glance.

But an unfashionable purse - now THAT was cause for alarm.

File this under Exhibit 3,498: Why I Could Never Happily Live in the Los Angeles Area.

Shine On, Diamond Ring

My anniversary is 6 weeks away, but I already have my first gift. It's a huge sparkler on my hand, a one carat diamond solitaire. I have never owned a diamond this large.

It's not from my husband, my kids or my mom. It's from a girlfriend of mine; interestingly, she also bought the wedding band I'm wearing. I've worn it for longer than I wore the one my husband bought.

We do not have a strange marriage that should end up on "reality" TV. My girlfriend just happens to value jewelry, and the more expensive it is, the better. She sees the need to give it to me precisely because I do not buy it for myself (a trait she finds to be very odd). I was reluctant to replace my wedding set; she was not.

When we picked out my wedding set more than a quarter century ago, I felt as if it was my one and only chance in life to own a diamond. I have always liked delicate jewelry (despite being told that large women need large jewelry to look "balanced," and the fact that society preaches that women should feel that bigger is always better, jewelwise). We went shopping together; my husband said, "I'm not picking out something you might hate." I chose an interlocking wedding set, vaguely filigreed, with three small diamonds on the engagement ring and one on the wedding band. One of the most romantic things my husband ever said was uttered there in front of the jewelry counter. As I stared at my left hand, he said, "So. Can you look at that every day for the rest of your life?" I could.

The first day I wore it, I sat through a green light just staring at my ring. I loved it. I truly wanted to wear it every day for the rest of my life. I was never one of those women who wanted to "trade up."

So, of course, I lost it.

Not all at once, mind you. First I started losing stones. The settings on my rings were the kind that held the diamonds in a raised setting with four prongs. I'm not up on jewelry terms; I don't know what it's called. I discovered quickly that if I wasn't careful, I'd put the ring straight through pantyhose while I pulled them up. I shredded several pair. It also tended to catch on things. After a while, the prongs would pull out or the gold would wear thin, and a stone would fall out.

The first time it happened, I was devastated. Even though it was a fairly inexpensive fix, it just didn't feel the same, having a replacement diamond. After the second and third times, the jeweler made the prongs bigger and sturdier. I still lost another stone, a different one.

I set the ring aside - in my jewelry box, I thought - until I could take it in to the jeweler again. We'd just moved, taken in two extra kids and were expecting a baby, so the repair had to wait. When we were ready, weeks later, to fix it, I couldn't find the ring. I looked everywhere. I cannot imagine, to this day, where it went. I know I put it somewhere I thought was safe, but safe does not equal nonexistent. I effectively hid it from myself.

I looked even in places that felt ridiculous. Its whereabouts remained a mystery. They still are.

I decided that I'd wear another ring, just until we found mine. I owned a couple of lovely cubic zirconia rings; they'd been free gifts when I agreed to "examine in your home, for 14 days without obligation," a full matching set containing the ring, a necklace, a bracelet and earrings. I also got an onyx bracelet that I loved and a couple of other pieces the same way. (I was sure that the company would stop offering, but they did it repeatedly, so I got some lovely things that way.)

No one ever noticed my wedding ring, but people frequently noticed my CZ ring. The stones were huge in comparison. I actually got quite irritated at the compliments after a while. I switched from one CZ ring to the other, but they were both large, so people still noticed. It annoyed me that nobody ever complimented, or even noticed, the ring that I loved, but they swooned over these placeholder rings.

So, I bought a thin gold band. Very thin, because as I said, I like delicate jewelry, and because it was inexpensive. After all, I'd put my real ring back on as soon as I found it.

I killed at least two, and probably three, bands before I gave up. They would bend, break, unroll and generally come apart. I don't think I'm that tough on my hands. It's not as if I have a manual labor intensive construction job or anything. From the look of the rings, you'd think I'd have bruises, cuts or missing fingers. My skin was always fine, but the rings were very much worse for wear. In fact, they became likely to hurt me themselves, with sharp bits sticking out.

I gave up and went without a ring.

It made my girlfriend Cheryl, mother of my older two daughters' best friends, slightly crazy. She knew my ring was lost, but could not fathom why I walked around bare handed.

After about three years of this, my daughter said, "Cheryl wants to know what kind of ring you like."

"Why?" I wanted to know.

"She wants to get you one."

"Tell her not to worry about it."

"She's getting you a ring, Mom. Just tell me what you want."

Well. "If I had it to do over, I'd get just a gold band." I still think my ring is gorgeous, but let's face it, it had also proven to be a hassle. Plus, I may never see it again. Nothing was going to fall out of a plain gold band. I'd have no reason to set it aside and lose it. I passed my ring size along to Cheryl.

She got me the biggest band I could imagine. It's thicker and wider than most men's rings. It felt as if it went halfway up to my knuckle and weighed five pounds. My hand felt so heavy! I sometimes wondered if I could still bend the finger.

Her instincts proved better than mine. It's been at least 8 years, maybe closer to 10, and I've never had a problem. It doesn't bend, break, lose things, chip - this ring is impervious to whatever killed its less sturdy predecessors. And since I never take it off, it can't get lost.

With our 25th anniversary coming up, Cheryl wanted to get something special to celebrate. Naturally, she thought of jewelry. She got me this huge solitaire, designed to ride above my gold band.

I was amazed that she remembered my size. She also, apparently, remembered the hassle with the diamonds falling out, because this setting is one I don't think I've ever seen. It's solid around the sides, and the top has a lip that rolls over the edge of the diamond. It's never going to fall out, and it's so smooth it won't snag on anything. I cannot quite believe that she got this for me. I'm sure she can't afford it, either, but that's another story.

Now, the set really does go halfway up to my knuckle. It's much larger than anything I would ever have picked out. It's gorgeous, and I love it for aesthetics sake, and also because I know the thought that went into it.

I have new worries, though. Am I more likely to get mugged? Should I leave it at home when I go on vacation? They always say not to take expensive jewelry on vacation. But if I'm leaving it at home, why would I own it?

I'll stop worrying. I'll enjoy it. Happy anniversary to us.