Photography is one of my hobbies. I’m by no means a professional, but I have been told—and I believe—that I’m a talented amateur. I’m working on revamping my photography portfolio (one my long list of summer projects), and I’ll post a link here when it’s available.

See how I give myself incentives?

But I was thinking about photography today, as I was getting ready to leave my parents’ house, because I noticed that I had brought my camera (I take it just about everywhere), but hadn’t really done anything with it. Better to have it and not want it than to want it and not have it, I suppose. Another part of what got me thinking was the fact that my mom wanted, while I was here, to replace the photo of me that they have hanging on their living room wall. Maybe a little rewind to this story….

A year ago, about my birthday, my parents decided that they needed a new picture of me for their living room, and so I handed my dad my camera, and we took care of that issue. Since that picture was taken, however, I’ve lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 pounds. The year-old picture, therefore, was not entirely what you might call accurate, any more.

Yesterday, then, Mom asked me to get them an 8×10 print made from a picture of me that my niece took at Grandma’s 90th birthday party last fall (which for the record, is the picture of me that used to be on the blog, and was six months and 10-15 pounds ago). So I got that print made, and we framed it. Mom and Dad still aren’t completely happy with it, but it’s good for now—and most people who have seen the photo say it’s a good picture of me.

I bring this up because I agree with that assessment. I like that pic. And because that’s a very rare situation—I much prefer to be behind the camera, in part because I’m quite used to not liking what I see when I look at a picture of me.

There it is. I have been conditioned not to like what that camera sees when it looks at me. And I saw another photo today—in the scrapbook of my sister’s wedding that Mom has (2 years ago)—that reinforced that conditioning.

Historically speaking, what the camera has seen has not been attractive.

At least, as objectively as I can speak about photos of me, that has been the case. And it’s still what I see when I look at new photos of me. Even now. And they say that the camera doesn’t lie.

But I think it does.

I know that what the camera shows me about myself must be in some sense “true.” But it’s not the whole truth. I know that cameras have a habit of finding odd shadows and weird angles, and capturing the unflattering things about us and recording them for all to see. But I know that when it comes to other people, I’ve seen (and taken) both good pictures and bad ones. Good pictures represent their subjects just as the photographer saw them. Bad ones may be “true,” depictions of the moment in which the flash went off, but the camera didn’t see what the photographer saw, and that makes those photos inaccurate in their “truth.”

I have looked at pictures of other people and been shocked. The camera, in that moment, certainly did not capture its subject well. The camera did not see what I see. How many times do I want to tell people that? And why don’t I?

But I know that for me, it’s a different thing. Historically, I have been the victim of good pictures of a bad reality. The camera saw what others see.

But the camera doesn’t always see the reality. And maybe, particularly as someone who really loves working the camera and making it do what it does, I should say that more often.