Lisa Morrell - Say Cheese! A portrait is born

May 22 2009

Say Cheese!

Published by David at 11:21 am under Opinion

Do you remember when taking a picture was easy? Now you might say that taking a picture today IS very easy. You can do it with your phone, your digital camera, your Nintendo DS, heck, your car will probably take your picture soon.

What I’m talking about is when you took a picture, let’s say of your family at the annual reunion or of your kid’s class during a concert back in 1990 something and you just pushed the button – CLICK – and went about your day as if nothing was different or out of the ordinary. Then you dropped your film off a the drug store and in 2-5 days you picked up your 4 by 6 pictures and ooohhhed and aaahhed over how cute little Bobby/Sue was in the school play. Every third shot featured an adorable picture of your thumb, and everyone had red-eye.

Now today, in 2009, when you take a picture, say of your colleague at work for a photo for a website, you snap the pic on your iPhone or digital camera. Then, you all crowd around a small, 2 inch by 2 inch digital display window to see if the image turned out OK. Invairibiy there is something wrong with the picture. Someone blinked, your hair looks weird, your nose is shiny, you don’t like the way your shirt is clingy to…well let’s forget that for a minute shall we…and you absolutely HAVE to retake the picture. Then you repeat the aforementioned steps about 8 times until you finally get a picture that one person loves, another hates and two other can live with. A portrait is born.

Sure we all look better today. Everything looks better in the photos we’re taking with our fancy digital devices…but the flip side is…any picture you take can end up being posted 42 places on the Internet and beyond.

On that note…I’m off to take more pictures of my coworkers….Oh, and sorry Lisa. I think you look great in every single picture we took of you last week! All 26 of them.

Lisa Morrell