School Picture Day Redux

 

Picture-taking last week was as traumatic as it was nearly fifty years ago when I had my picture taken for the high school annual. I still haven't learned to use more than a dash of mineral powder and lip gloss. I still have mostly bad hair days. Teen-aged acne has persisted long into middle age. I still usually look like the 'before' picture in a book on what not to wear. At least the braces were off my teeth.

 

I tried to prepare better this time, though. Rather than just blow-drying my hair, I scrabbled to the back of the bathroom cupboard for rollers, and while my hair dried, I sorted through all the clothes I'd put out as possibles for the shoot. With five minutes before I had to get on the freeway to Seattle, I carefully untangled my hair from the rollers and brushed. Uff da! The comb-out was a wispy retro pouf, but I didn't have time to wet it down and start over. Maybe it would settle down between Everett and Seattle. Since I still hadn't decided what to wear, I grabbed as many clothes as I could carry out to the car.

 

Although Susan Doupé had said her studio was in a community center, I was surprised to see the center was in the old (1902) University Heights School. This would really be a trip back to my klutzy school days. It was a lovely old building, though, with mellow fir bead board paneling and large arched windows.

 

I had taken Susan's suggestion to have her artist friend (Rhonda) on hand to do my make-up. As she sorted her tackle box filled with a hundred vials, jars, tubes, and brushes, I pulled up a stool and offered my face for her canvas. At the end I still looked like me, but with eyes you could see behind the glasses, a brighter mouth, and well-camouflaged zits.

 

Susan Doupé is the most thorough photographer imaginable. With her high-tech digital camera, she must have taken a thousand pictures: against carved stair railings, on worn wooden steps, upstairs and downstairs, seeking the best light. I was a challenging subject. With the exception of Liv Ullmann, most Norwegians (even third-generation ones like me) don't emote on cue. I stretched a smile a thousand times. Out of so many snaps, surely one will make me look better than I did in my mirror this morning. If I can figure out how to get pictures from a disc to my blog, I'll share some results.