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Age and Beauty
Sometimes, I am lucky enough to have friends who ask me to do an “artsy” photoshoot of them. This is my favorite kind of photography. I get to play with light and image, personality and whatever wildcard the setting provides. I love the joy of creating images. It gives me a high.
Bethany is an old friend from junior high who’s done modeling over the years. We are both seasoned at being behind and in front of the camera. We know how hard it is to pose and not feel like an idiot. We know how to mix things up to create a good image. We are also both incredibly vain.
Bethany visited me at my parents’ just this last month, so we took advantage of the funky tile in the clubhouse bathroom. I’ve always loved its retro charm. Then we walked out to the *famous* red barn, but funny enough, I don’t love the barn photos. I love the close-ups in the barn that created this stark contrast of darkness behind her and light on her face.
Bethany is a natural beauty, obviously. Her face structure and Grand Canyon-level cheek indents are otherworldly. We often joke that she is of alien origin with her Rh-negative blood type and crazy oversized eyes. I haven’t used Photoshop to create these images. Just a camera and selective lighting.
I love this one because it captures her charming side. Bethany can give resting-ice-queen-face but also has an adorable mischievous side that is probably why we are such good friends. Nothing is ever boring with Bethany. I have stories of her shenanigans to prove it.
Bethany trusts me and lets me create any image I want of her. I love that about her. She is confident in herself and me. It gives me a lot of freedom to capture and create. Photoshoots can be rigid and stressful. It can take a lot out of me to put the subject at ease with silly banter and jokes and remember to pay attention to the settings on my camera at the same time. One of my deep secrets is that I’m not a gadget geek; I never really mastered f-stops or film speeds. I hate using a flash… It’s too much math! I’m more about composition and form meet personality and chemistry between model and photographer. It’s a delicate dance.
This image is my favorite. I don’t care that there is a spit string. I think it makes it more real, in your face, and punk. We are Gen X and still hanging onto our it factor.
We’ve come a long way.
Love you, bestie!
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“Book Club” at the Speakeasy
Which is better? A bunch of short posts or one long rambly post with aaaaaaaall the photos?
Do you know what I don’t like about my style of blogging in the recent past? I love photography, obviously, and lots of pictures are good. Still, when my posts turn into a series of photos with one-line descriptions under each one that strain to segway to each other, it reminds me of boring vacation slideshows. Gah!
Does anyone remember home slideshows? When I was little, I remember going to someone’s house with my parents and sitting on the floor in the dark while the host flipped through their projected vacation slides onto a cleared-off wall. It was usually very dull, and the photography was awful in the late seventies to early eighties—lots of pictures of people standing against walls with red eyes and glare or faces centered in the middle and miles of space above their heads or maybe some landmark that is as boring as toast. And here is the Grand Canyon, and here is a picture of a lake. The host would linger on some slides longer than others and skip through the interesting ones really fast. Ooops! Didn’t mean to share that photo of Aunt Priscilla in her bathing suit! Maybe there were snacks. There certainly wasn’t alcohol.
But I digress. Too much meta-talk.
Today, you get a short (actually long) post about going to my friend Tamie’s speakeasy in her house. If you ever meet Tamie (who you will have to call Tamara because I’m the only one allowed to use her original childhood nickname), you will know why she has a speakeasy in her house. Tamie is a theatre tech teacher, and everything is about props and sets. Every room in her home has a theme. It’s over the top and fantastic. Her living room has sliding bookcase walls that overlap each other. There is a dragon head mounted to her fireplace and a rumor of a fog machine inside it so that its nose steams. Sometimes, it’s Christmas all year around, and even better, it’s spooky Christmas with lots of flickering battery-operated candles that can change colors with an app. Her cats have their own Asian-themed room with catwalks and cubbies mounted to the wall. Of course, the walls are painted with murals.
When I moved in with my parents in January, I joked to Tamie that I might have to set up a speakeasy in my closet because my parents don’t drink, and I didn’t want them to know about my occasional debauchery. It turns out my parents don’t mind if I have a glass of wine now and then, AND Tamie set up a speakeasy in her house for me instead! How cool is that? It’s more of a craft room for her, but on “Book Club” night, she turns it into a lively little party room just for us!
A bookshelf desk opens, and inside are shelves with lights, fancy glasses, and bottles. There is also a light turquoise mini fridge and a pink microwave (swoon!). She serves all kinds of snacks, which she is famous for. Tamie is the queen of girl dinner. Then we put records on the record player and pretend we are back in the twenties. Wait, we are in the twenties!
Anyway, it’s super fun. I decided to take “Book Club” up a notch and dress up in a flamboyant mumu, crazy glasses, and all the jewelry I own. My cousin Jacob borrowed my gold velvet fedora, and we were ready to paint the town. Except the town was just us staying in and streaming silly songs on YouTube for each other on the speakeasy television, getting drunk, and then falling asleep and spending the night.
I love this kind of entertainment. Getting old has brought me so much freedom. I don’t care what I look like. I have more confidence than I’ve ever had, which is so funny since I think I look worse than I ever have. But who cares? Nobody! All that matters is that friends get together and have a good time. Maybe my parents did the same thing with their boring vacation slide shows!
