Getting to Know my Face

As a photographer I have lots of up-close-and-personal experiences with people, and specifically their faces. It's hard to take hundreds of photos of a person and spend hours and hours staring at their face during post-processing and not end having developed a familiarity. I think this has made me appreciate the uniqueness and individuality of a lot of people around me. I actually like to look at people's faces. It's really cool.

But there's one person that I had never done this with: myself.

I'm not really the type of person to spend a lot of time getting acquainted with my face (or myself in general) in the mirror. I don't really do my hair. I wear very, very minimal makeup. So I don't have to look in the mirror to do those things. When I'm brushing my teeth or putting in my lenses is probably about the most time I spend looking at my face in the mirror. (I do have a habit of taking really unattractive selfies when I'm bored, but that just makes me laugh at my face.) In any case, I don't really ever LOOK at my face, and when I do, I'm probably nit-picking my hair or skin.

So it was very weird for me to take my own senior photos. When I was planning it, I was contemplating the reasons it would be uncomfortable. I had dabbled briefly in self-portraiture, mostly in my backyard, but I had a pretty good idea of how it would be different. Things went through my mind that would be kind of awkward, especially if someone saw me, like sitting alone across from a tripod and posing with no one really there to take the photo. But something happened that I didn't expect. I had to get acquainted--really acquainted--with my very own face, and my body also. I had to look at photos of myself. I had to analyze them like I do with the other people I photograph. It was weird and uncomfortable and awkward and it felt really different than I anticipated it to feel.

I never look at photos that I've taken of other people and judge them as harshly as I do photos of myself, so then I tried to approach it with an attitude of these-aren't-photos-of-me. This whole idea caused me to look at myself in a new way. 

I looked at my imperfections like I do with other people: they're cute, and they make me who I am. I started to appreciate the things about myself that I didn't really like before.

I remember looking at this photo and thinking, even though my obnoxious upper lip was doing the weird thing that it does when I smile, I looked really good. I looked really me. 

A lot of the photos are silly or slightly out of focus or just me being weird, but they really represent my personality well, and I actually like them. I like photos of myself. This is what I try to get other people to do all the time and I've finally gotten myself to do it too.

(ta-da! the end.)

5 things I have done that have nothing to do with being 18 that make me a real adult

1. Opened a checking account. With a line of credit. Oh snap. So yeah, I know that a lot of, like, 12 year olds have checking accounts, but I dealt in cash from the time I was 9 until I was 18, so this was a big deal for me.

2. Bought myself a Christmas present. And wrapped it. And put it under the tree to me from me. (This, I think, is an especially adulty thing to do.) 

3. Took myself out to lunch just because I felt like it. Really, this is one adulty thing that is actually awesome, because you can just think, "Hey, I want Panda Express." And you know what you can do? You can take an alternate route on your drive home and you can buy some freaking orange chicken and enjoy that.

4. Put a security deposit + down payment on an apartment. Basically the most daunting $150 I ever spent. Just got real, man.

5. Interviewed for a full-time job. The whole day waiting for it, I felt like I was going to vomit and I couldn't eat anything. And then on the way there I got super lost and backwards, cried, and was 1 minute late when I should have been 20 minutes early. Then I went in and they said to me, "You seem to be quite the go-getter." WELL YEAH I AM THANKS YOU SHOULD HIRE ME SO I CAN MAYBE PAY FOR 1% OF COLLEGE. I got the job, p.s. 

Vogue Magazine

If you're a member of the Pinterest community, or an Internet enthusiast at all, you've probably seen this photo circulating. In January I saw this photo for the first time and was intrigued as a photographer, so I chose to visually analyze it in school. It ended up taking a very different path than I had expected. Anyway, I thought I would share it.

Standards of beauty evolve over years and vary greatly between cultures. In developed countries, the economy and the sale of cosmetics, clothing, etc., have a circular effect on each other. Countries such as the United States, Italy, France, and Germany, where the fashion industry is booming, also seem to place great emphasis on beauty in a superficial sense. Overpriced clothing fills store windows, beauty magazines line store racks and streets. Everywhere we look we are bombarded by the industry.

Vogue magazine is circulated to approximately 1.7 million people each month in over 15 countries. Ethiopia is not one of those 15 countries. Viewing this photo, all that seems to come to mind is the difference between “Western beauty” depicted in the magazine, and the woman holding it in her hands. In this underdeveloped country, a seemingly different world, no flashing billboards with the latest trends or store windows call buyers, but there is still a beauty standard. It seems to be very different from that which we are used to seeing, but stopping to consider the similarities yields a new way of thought.

In our Western world, men and women alike adorn themselves with decorative clothing, accessories, and jewelry. Women make up their faces to feel good enough; to feel up to par with the ideal that has been set. At first thought, we may not think that people in the underdeveloped country of Ethiopia experience anything similar to the overbearing standard of beauty we have set. But they do, in a contrasting way.

In the Mursi tribe, men and women alike adorn themselves with decorative accessories and jewelry. They paint their faces to conform to their traditional standard of beauty. Their accessories are not the same as ours. Their face paint is not nearly as expensive as our “face paint,” nor is it applied in the same way, but the idea behind it all is related.

The woman in this photo may very well be looking at this magazine with a confused and wondering attitude, just as we may look at her and wonder. We may find each other strange or interesting or any number of other things when examining each other’s lifestyles.


We all have our own beauty standards. While we may look at each other and be shocked by the differences in hair, skin, clothing, and jewelry, the fact still stands that all are alike in traditions. Across countries and cultures, we are drastically different, but we are all human, and we all want to be beautiful. Our differences make us unique, but our similarities make us unified.

Mayhem and Murder

When I was 4 years old, I was playing barefoot on my back lawn with my sisters. I was running in the grass and suddenly a crazy pain started throbbing on the bottom of my foot. I had stepped on a wasp and it bit the underside of my fourth toe on my right foot. This was the first time I remembering realizing that bugs can hurt you.

When I was 10, I was at my cousins' house and, dressed for combat, we ventured into the garage to scout out the black widow that they had found the previous day. We shot it with an air soft gun and it exploded a little bit. It exploded a lot, actually.

At 14, I was lying in my bed one night, nearly asleep, when I heard a thump on my ceiling fan directly above my bed. My eyes opened slowly and I looked around, not seeing anything in the dark. I reached over and turned on the light. I leaned over the edge of my bed and started to look for what had hit my fan, and immediately was pelted in the face by a large moth. Naturally, I screamed, and my mother came in to my room accompanied by my sister who was already laughing. I had black moth ick on my face.

I don't like bugs. I don't like crawly things. I especially don't like flying things. And I don't really like to kill any of them. I'll tell you why.

Mosquitoes
Okay, actually, I always kill mosquitoes. Always. Even if I lose track of them, I hang out and wait till I see them (or feel them) again. I may even take a little satisfaction in killing them. In the early summer when we usually have our windows open, the mosquitoes, like, flock to my bedroom at night, and there have been nights where I keep watch for an hour to make sure they're all dead. There's nothing worse than a mosquito in your sheets causing you to wake up to 7 bites on various body places.

Bees
They're scary enough when they're outside and buzzing at you, but when they come inside, it's like you're trapped in a confined space with them, and if you anger them, you're an ever more apparent target. Fly swatters, of course, are handy, but if you miss them, then they're mad and they go on a rampage, you know? Most of the time I just open a window really wide and hope they find their way out eventually.

Spiders
Spiders' bodies are comprised of two parts: a hard, crunchy exoskeleton, and their gooey guts. Consequently, when I think about smashing them, I hear this crunch/splat in my mind that really just makes it impossible for me to smash them, especially if they're on a wall where I have to do it with my hands. Ew. About the only time I will smash a spider is if it's on hard floor and I can drown out the crunch in my mind with the bang of the shoe on my foot.

Flies
Flies are so obnoxious, but I almost feel bad for them. I mean, they only live like a week at most, and usually they get killed before that. But I think about all the freaking eggs they lay and how they lay eggs inside of people's houses and that's nasty so then I don't feel bad.

Bugs in general
It would be scary if there were giants that were, like, 500x your size that hung out in your world. And it would be terrifying to be killed by them. I think of all the ways I've killed bugs--swatter, yard stick smash in the corner of the ceiling, shoes, cup and paper trap, toilet flush... Drowning in the shower, sometimes repeatedly. Get the cat to eat them. Bleach spray.
HOW WOULD IT BE IF ANY OF THAT HAPPENED TO YOU? Oh my. It would be awful.

The best solution to all of this is to live with someone whose thoughts don't include any of these things.  Because when I see a bug and all of those things start cycling through my head, I can say, "Hey, dad, spider," and my mother will come kill it for me while my dad continues to do whatever it is he's doing.

How are You?

I hope people know that my grammar is much better in real life than it is on my blog. I got a little embarrassed when I thought about that, because I really do have pretty great grammar. I just type very poorly for my blog. Maybe I should stop... Whatever. 

Anyway, I was thinking about a sort of weird thing that has happened to our language (or maybe culture, or both), and I'm honestly rather weirded by it. It's "How are you?"

I mean, it isn't really a question. It's more like an extension of a greeting, and doesn't actually mean anything probably 95% of the time. When was the last time you asked someone how they were with sincerity and expected a sincere answer in return? Or when was the last time someone asked you? It's probably been a while, right? Because it isn't even treated as a real question. It is a subtitle of "Hello." 

To be honest, I kind of hate it when people greet me with,"Hey, how are you?" Because 1) usually it's in passing and I barely have time to give the conditioned answer of, "I'm good; how are you?" (As of late, actually, I've left off the "How about you?" part and people are sometimes offended by that which is also dumb.) And 2) if I were to honestly tell them how I'm doing/feeling/thinking, they probably wouldn't want to ask me another question ever again. 

"Hi, how are you?" 

"I'm good. How are you?" 

"I'm good, thanks." 

Do you see that "conversation"? That isn't even a conversation. It has no meaning. That was a waste of 15 seconds and it was all a lie. It's part of this other thing that I've noticed people do. People don't talk about important things they're thinking or feeling. People don't talk about important things. Why can't we just ditch small talk and be honest about ourselves, even if it doesn't seem really conventional? The only reason it doesn't seem convenional is because hardly anyone does it. Let's do it. For real. 

The funny thing is, I started replying with atypical answers to this question that I don't enjoy, and people don't really even notice. 

"How are you?" 

"I'm great! How about yourself?" 

"That's great. I'm good." 

Did you even listen to my answer? I bet not. 

"How are you?" 

"I'm okay..." 

"Just okay?" 

"Yeah."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that."

No you're not. Don't lie to me.

"How are you?" 

"I'm dying inside because I hate the non-question you just asked me. How are you?" 

"Oh, I'm good, thanks." 

Seriously. What has happened to this question? It's purely rhetorical, and people who ask it don't really care how you're doing, because if they did, they would ask you for real. 

Stress and Big Choices. Yay.

I know that most of my posts have at least a slight joking feel to them, but today I felt like being seriously serious, talking about something going on lately that has been really stressing me out. 

I've been having a really rough time, just because I'm gearing up for a lot of change and decisions that are pretty important. And scary. Most of these things I've been worried about, I've already addressed. 

Of course I've known for years that all of these decisions were ahead of me, but when they're really ahead of you--as in a few feet away--they get really real and really intimidating.

But through all of this I've made a big mistake. I have been focusing too much on myself and not letting God show me an eternal perspective. (I actually do that a lot because, well, I'm human, and that's a thing that humans tend to do.) Yes, the decisions I'm making in regard to college, living, etc, are important, but in the grand scheme of things, they're really not as important as I've been making them out to be. Education beyond high school is something I know God wants me to do. That encompasses a lot of big choices. But I've been focused too much on being perfect by myself, making the perfect choices, and figuring everything out on my own so much that I have started to forget my true source of help.

What is more important is that I continue to love my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ more every day. It is so hard to not give in to stress and worry and fear. When we give all of that to God, however, He can take it away and replace it with strength and peace.

I was so caught up in frustration with my expectations of myself and stuck in my head that I knew I needed a break, so I meditated and prayed and read my scriptures because I know that those things always take away my worry. I immediately felt peace after praying and realized what I had been doing wrong. This isn't about right now, however much I may think it is. 

Now, as for finding a better job, conjuring up money to pay for college, and all the other scary things I need to do, at this very moment, I don't know how those are going to work. But if I can just come closer to and love God every day, He can give me strength and show me His plan for me. Because I know that God loves us and He wants to bless us with the answers to our prayers.