In all seriousness though, this primping in front of the camera thing has nothing at all to do with vanity, but has everything to do with celebration.

I love all things photography and of course this goes way way way back.  There was always a gang of cameras in our home.  My dad -- we'll call him the professional always had the latest and greatest equipment.  I recall going on family vacations and posing for those dreaded vacation photos.  My sisters and I standing there rolling our eyes as he would do all this lens focusing. My mother was the historian, she had cameras as well, usually of the instant variety from Polaroid or the trusty Kodak Instamatic that had the flash on top in the shape of a cube.  Not wanting to be left out of the picture I got my first camera somewhere around 1976 a Kodak Pocket Instamatic with the long rectangular flash. Since those days I've had many cameras. Right now the camera I'm using is a fab point and shoot for us amateur shutterbugs, the Canon Powershot sx130 Which gets a workout because I ALWAYS have it with me.

Having taken many photos and posed for more than a few there was a space of seven years, in which all that picture taking was virtually shut down.  I still did it for my church, still took photos of my family, but was loathe to stand in front of a camera.  The few hanging around of me show me smiling and even clowning because that's what you're supposed to do. However, when I saw the finished product I always hated what I saw.  Until finally I resulted to ducking when a camera was pointed at me.

I was ashamed, embarrassed and saddened by what I saw.  The person I saw could not have been me.  She was on SWOLE!  As they say though pictures don't lie and in my case another old adage held true "a picture is worth a thousand words".  The swollen pictures really told on me -- what I'd been doing and going through.

By 2008 life had changed DRAMATICALLY. I don't know what happened or what made me decide to do it but one Sunday before going to church I decided to take a picture of myself.  Maybe I liked the dress, maybe I was feeling particularly happy that day I don't know but I took the picture and I liked it.  Then I kept doing it.  I figured Sunday is the day that I give my best effort (because it's all downhill the rest of the week effort wise) and it's usually the day in which I feel the most optimistic so why not capture that.

Why do I do it?

Not to feed some narcissistic need, not because I think I'm hot.  Anyone who knows me, knows that I think I'm so NOT hot.  I do it because I'm celebrating the gift of struggle and the gift of success on the other side of through.  I do it because I want to be reminded that trouble don't last always. I do it because I'm no longer ashamed and hope that in some way I can pass on to somebody else that they don't need to be ashamed now or ever for who they are, where they came from and definitely not for what they look like.

There's some healing in a camera -- pick up one and get yours.