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Saturday, September 17, 2011

On Self-Portraits


I'm writing this instead of packing. And because I just went to change the song on my itunes and saw in the next window, my open "Pictures" folder, a sub-folder entitled "self." I was curious, so I clicked on it (sob story of the internet...). I almost laughed at the pictures I found there. Back in the day, I had a brief foray into photography. And by "brief foray" I mean I worked my point-and-shoot canon to the bone in high school and upgraded to a nikon dslr in college. I also mean that I tried really hard to be artsy and took a lot of pictures of flowers. And then went on to upload those pictures to flickr and beg people to pay attention to me. Luckily for everyone I"m over that now (mostly) and tend to opt for taking bazillions of pictures of my unsuspecting friends whenever I re-discover my camera. You're welcome.


Anyway. The point. I found all these old self portraits. I rarely took pictures of myself for various self-deprecating reasons, most of which were simply due to the fact that I was in high school and puberty is a bitch. The rest of them are due to the fact that I hate self portraits, mostly in painting or drawing terms but in photography terms as well. For no real reason, really, other than I hate having to stare at my own face for that long and I hate that everyone can tell when it doesn't turn out as intended. As far as the photography self-portraits went, half of them are too close to my super-smiley face, the other half were me looking away from the camera, being "moody" and "angry" and whatnot. [High school Hallie would be so mad at me right now. Anyway, moving on...] There were also some random pictures of just me that I didn't know where to file (I have an extensive filing system for my pictures that's only half-carried through. Thus I have lots of categories of organization but nothing's really organized into said categories. I'm gong on an awful lot of tangents tonight, my apologies). Right at the end there were two recent pictures of me that I'd taken off my camera and dumped in the appropriate folder.

The difference was both astounding and hilarious; I sat there for a good solid minute just flipping back and forth between a picture of me at probably sixteen and a picture of me from the beginning of the summer. It's not that I look better in either picture, necessarily, I just look different. I remember taking the picture at sixteen. It was supposed to go next to a bio of me for something and thus had to be just me and my smiling face. My mom took the picture. I felt awkward. I didn't know what to do with my arms. Or my hands. Or my face. The result is a shot my mom took of my as I was about to laugh, which I deemed good enough and turned in even though I didn't like it very much. The recent picture was taken this summer, right after I had gotten a haircut. I wanted to send the picture to a friend because the haircut was ever so slightly different than my usual fare and I was feeling sassy and all that. Oh, what a difference a few years make.

That's really the point I'm trying to make here, if I'm trying to make a point at all instead of just aimlessly procrastinating, is that I'm a lot different from the person I was in high school. In a lot of ways. In a lot of good ways. And that's all I have to say about that. 

Sunday, September 11, 2011

"Be pretty if you can, be witty if you must, but be gracious if it kills you." - Elsie de Wolfe


Another sample from the aforementioned "Quotes" Word doc...this one came from Matchbook Magazine's facebook page. I recently discovered this charming online magazine and, let me tell you, it has become my guide to life.

Oh. Hi, Blog.

So I haven't been around much lately. I'm not sure whether you noticed or not but I'm going to pretend that I did. I''m not really sure why I've been gone or where I've been. I thought when I started this blog that it would sort of be the dumping grounds for all my super great thoughts. Turns out, I don't have that many great thoughts that I'd like to share with the whole wide internet.

I had some thoughts today, though. I'm not sure if they're internet-worthy, but I'm going to write them down anyway. I'm starting school again in a week. I went to get Chinese food for dinner tonight and as I drove back, with the windows down and the cool summer evening rushing around me and the baseball game on the radio, I thought about my summer. It's been a weird one, not necessarily because anything has or hasn't happened, but because of that blank space in between the two extremes. I'm trying to be deep here and it's not really working, but basically I'm glad that I finally seem to be accepting the fact that everything moves forward, myself included.  

Stay tuned for the remainder of my summer posts...I've been crafty lately and I want to share the stuff I've made with you. :)