"Chinese peonies and a sea of sheets": my photoshoot with Haz

This past Friday I had the privilege of being the subject of a session of hazliya*'s fabulous photography. I've been admiring her work for a while now-- particularly her fantastic shoot with morethings5 in which she turned him into an ethereal antlered spirit of the woods --and was really delighted when she agreed to do a shoot with me.

Me and my vanity have a strange relationship with photography. I've never felt I photographed particularly well, and my typical response to pictures taken of me was to marvel how little they aligned with the person I see (and, honestly, so much prefer the look of) in the mirror. Plus my skin always comes out blotchy and my hair is always somehow wrong. I know the camera doesn't lie, but I think it emphasizes things that aren't necessarily as prominent, like the redness in my skin, in real life. And yet, with my Narcissus-like absorption with my own image, I really enjoy being the subject of photographs. The only times pictures work out to my satisfaction has been when the photographer has taken a little care with the lighting and everything, and frankly since I don't have the best skin I think wearing the makeup I usually eschew serves to even things out.

Haz is an awesome person to work with. She is great with every aspect of a photoshoot-- she does fabulous hair and makeup, she knows how to dress the set, she sets up gorgeous shots, and she gives great direction that really helped me figure out what to do with himself. I have done a little bit of modeling before, mostly very closely proscribed shoots involving "wear this costume and get x, y, and z shots on my list," but I really liked the way Haz experimented and gave such helpful direction.

I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised by how much the whole process felt like doing theater. Getting into hair, makeup, and costume (such as mine was, heehee), having to put together a set, and then take direction to do the piece. But the few other times I did something like this didn't have that familiarity, so it was a pleasant surprise.

All the pictures are on Facebook now, if you'd like to see them. Haz is a whiz at photo editing as well, which also blows me away. It helps downplay all those little imperfections that I fixate on. That's the mark of a truly vain person, by the way-- not that they know everything that's right about that, that they know everything that's wrong about them. Though I like all of them, here are my three favorites:

So many thanks to Haz for being so awesome. I actually like these photos, that useless pointed corner of my room actually was good for something, and I like the way I look in yellow here. All very, very amazing things.