I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

I don’t photograph well.

Oh sure, we all know those people who, when you see them in pictures, always elicit the remark “wow, you look AMAZING!” I personally know a few of the people, reasonable-looking guys and gals all. But somehow the camera holds this magical power to conceal their flaws and highlight their best traits.

Me, I’m lucky if I don’t look like a toad. I’m in very few of the pictures of my trip, and of the couple-of-dozen or so that I am in (remember this is over seven months), I maybe look presentable in two of them.

To that end, my publicity professional, Angela “The Maven,” send me to the wonderful folks at Orange Photography posthaste for a decent headshot to grace my cover and other promo materials.

Arriving at their studio in San Francisco’s waterfront section, two things hit me: one, it’s the first time I’ve been professionally photographed since one of my sisters’ weddings almost a decade back. Two, this whole publicity thing is weird: aside from helping to organize (and direct) a charity telethon in college, I’ve never been one for the limelight. Puppet-mastery is more my thing… hence my past work in movies as an assistant editor, and present-day job in computer software at (mostly) congenial but anonymous companies. I kind-of like it that way: being an unknown allows one a lot more freedom.

Still, the book demands promotion, so off for my close-up I went. Entering the nondescript industrial building through the lobby-cum-loading dock, I marched up to the second floor, down a corridor wide enough to accommodate a Mack truck, and into Orange’s capacious studios overlooking San Francisco’s last electric substation — which I thought was almost a cool enough backdrop to use in my picture.

Angela insisted on being there to ensure the right kind of pictures were taken — one previous client had been photographed in pith helmet coming out of the bushes… clever and all, but not exactly what they were going for. Good homo that I am, I brought an assortment of clothing; as the minutes ticked by and Angela didn’t arrive, we began snapping away. I now see how pros do it: they make you relax and pose naturally, the way you want, and in so doing capture you at your best. Tweaks and suggestions are made subtly, so that you’re posing without even realizing it.

Half an hour later, a flustered Angela showed up… in addition to a prior meeting that ran forever, her status as long-time San Francisco resident led her to think the Dogpatch was somewhere else entirely… I mean, in 1998 who the heck had even heard of this part of town, much less been there? In any case, she more than proved her mettle by flipping through the pictures we took on the digital camera screen — and instantly knew we had what we needed. I quip that I feel like I’m channeling Katherine Hepburn in our chosen shot — or rather, the old SNL sketch of a hypothetical nephew of hers (“On Sundays I get up and eat a laahge bowl of BRAN!”) — but damn, I daresay it looks good:

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