• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

HollyRobinson

Writer & Red Dirt Rambler

  • Home
  • Bio
  • Blog
  • My Books
    • Haven Lake
    • Chance Harbor
    • The Gerbil Farmer’s Daughter
    • Sleeping Tigers
    • The Wishing Hill
    • Beach Plum Island
    • Folly Cove
  • Ghostwriting

Every Writer’s Nightmare: The Photo Shoot

Posted on 07.02.14 | Holly Robinson | 1 Comment

The singer Lorde recently made headlines for posting “actual” pictures of herself, acne scars and all, when the media ran digitally-altered pictures showing her with a perfect creamy perfection. Her photos were accompanied by a healthy message: “Remember, flaws are ok.”

I kept repeating that mantra as I suffered through a photo shoot recently for my next novel. It didn’t work. The minute the photographer sent me the proofs, I said, “Um, isn’t there a way you can, you know, tweak these?”

Shame on me, I know. But hell. If my author photo is going to grace Amazon pages, web sites, and press materials from my publisher, do I really want to look like Homer Simpson after a thirty-year binge of beer and chips?

I didn’t even want a new author photo. I’m the one in my family who always holds the camera and is therefore never in family pictures. There’s a reason for that: I’m camera-shy. Or maybe even camera-phobic.

Besides, I was pleased as punch with the publicity shot I already had–the one you see on my web site now. This photo was taken by my daughter’s friend, a woman in her twenties who wasn’t afraid to smooth and liquify and do whatever else was necessary to make me look like I must have as a bride the first time around, before raising a blended family of five children, moving four times, weathering health and financial crises, and writing books around the clock—a practice that means I’m hunched in front of the computer for seven hours at a time. Not exactly a recipe for aging gracefully.

However, I hate picking up subsequent books by authors through the years and seeing the same photo over and over. I’m disappointed—I want to see how other people change over time.

When this photographer sent me the unretouched photos, I was—I admit it—shocked by the lines in my face. But that was only because it was MY face. If this were someone else’s face—some other author’s or actor’s—I would love these photographs as art, as portraits of someone who looks intelligent and compelling. Someone who has taken risks, loved, lost, and lived a full life.

Yes, that’s the adjective I’ll hang my hat on: “compelling.” I am not getting wrinkles. I’m gaining character in my face. Those laugh lines were meant to be there. So were the furrows between my eyebrows. After all, you can’t write novels without thinking hard for hours, weeks, months at a stretch about these other worlds you’re creating. Do I want to look expressionless, smoothed by Photoshop or Botox? I do not.

Well, that’s a lie. Part of me really does want to look that way. I want to be as wise as I am now while still having the breasts and skin and knees of a twentysomething. I want to have my family and my husband and my house and my garden, my whole writer’s life—but I want to have the energy I had at thirty.

I miss my youth. But, if I had to choose between author photos of a young woman who has yet to live, and these pictures of a writer who has children and friends and a husband she adores, and work she is so impassioned about that she wants to sit at the computer for hours at a time, then I will choose the pictures of that woman. I want to look like what I am: a writer who has lived and learned, and is living and learning, still, full steam ahead.

I emailed the photographer back. “I’d still like you to tweak those photos a little,” I said, “but just a little. I still want to look like me.”

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • More
  • Email
  • Pocket
  • Print
  • Tumblr
  • Reddit

Categories: Uncategorized Tags: aging gracefully, author photos, Botox, digital photography, Lorde, Photoshop, portrait photography, self-confidence, self-image, women and body image

Holly Robinson's avatar

About the Author

Holly Robinson is a novelist, journalist and celebrity ghost writer. She and her husband have five children and a stubborn Pekingese. They currently divide their time between Massachusetts and Prince Edward Island, and are crazy enough to be fixing up old houses one shingle at a time in both places.

Reader Interactions

    Leave a Reply Cancel

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

    1 Comment

  1. Diane Tufts says

    August 27, 2014 at 10:26 am

    You are beautiful & should never fear cover photos. Next time you do some, come & see us that morning and we will make you fabulous! Right on the Newburyport waterfront on Winter Street……I will bring in your book for you to sign for me!

    Reply

sidebar

Blog Sidebar

Follow Me

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Follow me on BookBub

<span>Follow me on BookBub</span>

Click here to read my recent articles and essays

TwitterFacebookLinkedin

Copyright © 2020 Holly Robinson

Website by Bakerview Consulting