I am the kid in school with the camera. I take photographs, it's kind of my thing. It makes me incredibly happy, it makes me incredibly more sane than I would otherwise have been.
But I'm also an attention whore.
To an extent that is. I'm a very shy person in real life, unless you know me in which case I seldom shut up. I can't public speak, and once I had to stand up in front of the class whilst a song of my choice played, and I shook so much I couldn't write for another five minutes. But I've found the guts to public speak before, and I can do it (under a lot of pressure) and more than that, I'm a theatre kid. It's not the audience I am afraid of. It's the showing myself.
Sometimes, like the photography, I retreat to backstage. I just completed a play where I wrote the lighting and sound scripts, burnt the sound effects onto disks and eventually assisted the technical department in a professional theatre using my script and effects. But more often than not, I'm the child whose reciting Shakespeare or trying to find Neverland.
I love photography for itself, but I also love that within my circle of friends, it's me that they come for for photographs, for film, for editing, for working out how to attach the 88mm lense to their dad's camera...I'm pretty sure they get something out of it as well. My best friend Claire got over 500 hundred images to use for her Bronze DofE trampolining proof...whilst I got to scrounge around in the dirt for my own trampolining images.
Here is the problem! Because I am always hidden behind the camera, there are virtually no pictures of me. That's a tiny exaggeration; it's not like people don't offer. There are so many lovely people who offer to get a picture of me pirouetting or performing a front landing...but because of the experience I have with a camera, I'm a massively picky snob.
There is a photo shoot I've wanted to recreate for a while, and I know exactly how I would do it, I've experimented with the makeup and facepaint I would use, I even know how I would make the costumes. But in my head, I am one of the characters. In fact, because I designed the ideas in my head, I am the girl who I see as the main person. That doesn't make me the best person for the job. It is just what I think, I suppose.
I am not entirely sure where I am going with this post. I suppose it's about the child peering out from behind the camera at her peers who all look fabulous, doing what they do and wanting in on the action, and you can see that as a metaphor for life, but it isn't really. We are told we can't do everything we want to do in life, and I guess that's okay. But it would also be really nice to, just for once, be in on that and be the girl who stands in front of the camera and gets to say "Cheese!"
There is a photo shoot I've wanted to recreate for a while, and I know exactly how I would do it, I've experimented with the makeup and facepaint I would use, I even know how I would make the costumes. But in my head, I am one of the characters. In fact, because I designed the ideas in my head, I am the girl who I see as the main person. That doesn't make me the best person for the job. It is just what I think, I suppose.
I am not entirely sure where I am going with this post. I suppose it's about the child peering out from behind the camera at her peers who all look fabulous, doing what they do and wanting in on the action, and you can see that as a metaphor for life, but it isn't really. We are told we can't do everything we want to do in life, and I guess that's okay. But it would also be really nice to, just for once, be in on that and be the girl who stands in front of the camera and gets to say "Cheese!"
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