Wine, women and fast cars… oh the life of a pregnant photographer!

Ha! It’s such a joke that I keep getting hired for these photographer jobs. I’ve got the people skills, I’ve got the connections and I have the equipment (thanks to being married to a pro) and I can even frame a decent shot…but I just don’t have the brains! I am the worst camera geek ever! I shot this whole event on the wrong shutter speed.

Everything is blurry and awful*. I should have just switched to auto mode and shot it like a dummy. I would have been better off. Toby is hanging his head in shame. Thankfully, I wasn’t the only photographer there and most of my shots will just be small little blurbs in society magazines BUT STILL!!! I am a disgrace to the industry! Good thing they don’t pay me that much.

The irony is that I thought it was my best job yet. I schmoozed with the models. I got right in there and snapped at the big wigs. I was brave. I wrote down names. People smiled at me as the flash popped. I thought maybe maybe maybe I should think about doing this full time. The pictures looked great on the back of my lcd screen. But oh, was I wrong.

When I got home, and Toby and I reviewed the 100 some pictures I took, it was time for a big lesson in photography. Like photography 101 for dummies. Poor Toby. The stuff I don’t get is what he learned when he was ten years old!!! No matter how many times he tries to drill in the difference between AV and TV and all the fractions in between, my brain just turns to mush. I don’t understand why I’m wired so completely illogically when it comes to mechanical equipment. Toby had to practically break it down into flash cards for me to understand the simplest concepts.

Yet I can work a room (people wise) in circles around him. I think that’s why I keep getting hired for these jobs in the first place. I know how to get people to pose for me. I know how to set up a great shot. I just don’t know how to use my camera properly. It’s a cryin’ shame.

*They look mostly okay on the web because the web is low resolution and the images are dithered to make them into an animated gif. In print, however, these shots are going to look like dog doo doo.

I got my hair chopped. It’s a little too short and a little too uniform but that will fix itself in a few weeks. My hair never stays smooth, it always gets a little shaggy with time. I think I like it. I’m not sure. I’m just having issues with trying to take a picture of myself that I like. I used to be so photogenic, I never minded having my picture taken. Now I can’t even take a picture from my most flattering angle (above, looking down) and have it turn out.

I guess I just have to accept it. I look like a mom.

I probably should have warned you that I was going to put a giant picture of a scary moth on today’s post. I wasn’t going to at first. I was going to put something else up and then link to it so if you’re squeamish you could choose not to click on it. But then I hit the blog dry spell and couldn’t find anything else to put up. Oh it’s a crappy day at secret-agent-josephine.com!

Just kidding.

Everything is fine here. Yesterday was a surprisingly busy day. The fake mock ups are going swimmingly and I like working again. For a while there I thought I was going to die a slow death of boredom. I really really really hate being bored at work. I know I should be thankful to get paid to stare at my nose, but I hate it! I’ve quit jobs over being bored. I slowly go mad. Thankfully, they asked me to sketch up some drawings of a photo shoot they might do and I decided to do my sketch on the computer instead (because I’m faster with a mouse than I am with a pencil). Guess what!?? They might use my illustration and skip hiring a photographer! Wooo Hoooo! I love being paid as an illustrator. I know I’ll never break into the whole illustration industry. There are way too many crazy talented artists out there that put me to shame. But that doesn’t mean I can’t get an illustration or two published now and then. We’ll see what becomes of it. Right now the project is still imaginary. That’s fine with me.

It beats taking pictures of the giant moth that was out in the hall. This thing was so scary. I should have put a quarter up next to it or my finger so you could gauge it’s size. I was too afraid it might bite me to get that close. You’ve seen these moths before. They are about 4 inches big. How do they get so big and what are they called? How many of them are there? Do they live in colonies? Why do I only see one when I do see them? Thank God I only see one. Can you imagine if a swarm of these things dive bombed your head?!! That would be one of my greatest fears. Good thing I never watched Silence of the Lambs

Another fun thing that happened, at work yesterday, was the “Guess how old Brenda is” game. Everybody who knows me loves to play this game with their unsuspecting friends. Mostly because all my life I’ve looked at least five years younger than I am. I know, I know this is a good thing. But believe me, most of my life it has not been a good thing. For example it was very hard to get my first real job; and another, I think I got passed up on a few promotions because they thought I was just a “kid”. But anyway, it does have it’s advantages and lately these advantages have been paying off. Who wants to look thirty-three when you can look twenty three?! Or at least that’s what I thought.

The game did not go as well as usual yesterday. Everybody was throwing out numbers like twenty six and twenty seven. It was all good and then this one girl piped up l from another room, “THIRTY THREE!” she yells. What! How could she know? She reads my blog. She cheated! Everybody in the room gasped. Could it be true? Yes, I nodded, I am indeed that old. “I knew because she has two gray hairs on the side of her head,” yelled the girl from the other room. I glared at the voice behind the wall.

What!!!! My secret is betrayed by two gray hairs! Is this the end of the era of getting away with acting five years younger than I really am? Are people going to start thinking I’m wise and should know how to do complicated math problems and stuff!? Do I have to start wearing nylons? Oh no!

All my life I’ve planned on letting my hair go gray naturally. I like silver hair. My mom has mostly white and silver hair and over the years her color changed in the most beautiful way possible. It started with “frosting” at the front (it was the 80’s) and gradually turned to almost completely white now in 2005. I like to imagine myself looking like a wizened Native American with long black hair, peppered with streaks of silver. Maybe I’ll start wearing turquoise bracelets to go with my hair. I know I’m weird, but I kinda like being the “tree hugging, granola eating, berkenstock wearing” sort of woman. I think I can pull it off.

Until yesterday, that is. I actually got a little scared inside. It kinda surprised me that my hair could give away my age so accurately. I think my face still looks young and I don’t wear make-up that often. But two gray hairs! (I actually have more, it’s just those two on the side that are obvious.) I instantly thought of pulling them out and then all those commercials you see on television of women with “vibrantly beautiful hair.” Should I? Is now the time to finally fit in with everyone else in my neighborhood and go blonde? Naaaah. I’ll never do that. Well, not when I have that much hair on my head anyway. If I cut it really short again, I might bleach it blonde. Just for kicks. But I’m going to wait a good long while before that. I want my daughter to get to know the real me before I hit mid life crisis and go completely unpredictable.

But I do think I am going to get my hair cut today if I can find a salon that will fit me in. The amazing French haircut has finally grown out completely. I’m so sad. I wish I could go back to Paris to get it cut again. That was such a fun experience. If I was a French girl, I would never look old. No matter how many gray hairs I had.