Recently I was looking through some old photos, mug shots, pictures of me at events, signings, and other promotional type stuff. It occurred to me that “the Cloud” enables me to hang on to crummy photos almost indefinitely. It also occurs to me that I need some new photos. I’m not terribly vain, so I decided to share some of the outtakes with you. (These are photos that, heretofore, have not been shared publicly.)
Here’s me with fab author Peg Cochran chatting with a few folks at a book signing in Grand Rapids, Mich. She’s the “good guy” in white. They say black is slimming. “They” lie.
This GIF shows me talking to a gracious group of folks at a library in Gwinn, Mich. Either I was a little nervous or the floor in that room was pitching like the deck of a ship in rough waters.
On the road, traveling to promote my books, is hard work. I had actually done a book signing at a library on this trip. Naturally, I work up an appetite. Hubs snapped this shot of me about to take a bite out of a cookie. It was not my first bite. Or my first cookie.
If this top looks familiar, it’s the one I’m wearing in my Facebook profile picture. I’ve used that profile mug shot widely as an author bio picture. That photo was one of seemingly hundreds of pictures my husband shot of me that day in various locales. This one in which my expression clearly says “Enough with the photos already!” was the LAST shot that day. We’ll end with it today, too.
(This picture look familiar?) Several years ago author Vickie Fee moved from Memphis on the banks of the muddy Mississippi River to Marquette on the shores of chilly Lake Superior, taking her accent, her sense of humor, and her recipe for Jack Daniels whiskey balls with her. She pens fun cozy mysteries with sassy Southern heroines. When she’s not dawdling on social media and swilling coffee, you can find Vickie at www.vickiefee.com and in the coop at Chicks on the Case.
Do you save photos, even bad ones, too? Do you force friends and family to immediately delete photos of you from their cell phones that you dislike? Maybe I should institute that policy.
Chicks on the Case 
I delete bad photos of myself. I cannot make members of my family do the same. The Hubby used to have a holiday tradition of snapping a shot of my butt. Yeah, I put a stop to that – eventually.
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Liz, almost snarfed my coffee re: your hubby’s holiday “tradition.” You know those cute Christmas cozies…I have a plot idea.
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Oh yes!
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I’m almost afraid to ask how that tradition started…
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It happened by accident and he thought it was funny. So did I. The first time.
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I’m thinking you employed some sort of retribution to reform his photo habits!
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I hid his phone until the opportunity passed. LOL
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Since I am the one with the camera most of the time, I don’t have tons of pictures of myself bad or good. But if a photo is really terrible, and I have control, yes I will delete it. My children and grands are not so lucky. I have documented just about every minute of theirs lives except for baths and diaper changes. I try to give them some dignity. LOL!
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True! The person behind the camera tends to not be in the pic. (That’s my hubby’s role.)
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We tend to take more photos of things (i.e., buildings, scenery, etc.) than of us. So it’s a problem when we need a recent photo for a profile pic or something else.
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Lol
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What cute pix, Vickie! I need a new author photo, too, and I have some pretty terrible options from my camera roll so far. Will I share the outtakes? No, I will not, lol. I keep finding the perfect settings, but…sigh. I’m telling myself I need a new cell phone camera, but I don’t think that’s actually the problem.
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I also need a new author photo but am too lazy (& too picky). So near future books will probably have me unchanged from series to series.
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The scary part is there are outtakes that are even worse!
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I love that gif, Vickie! Hilarious. I am that perfect Venn diagram of the intersection of “not particularly vain” and “not particularly photogenic” so the internet is full of ridiculous but completely recognizable photos of me. I’m a bit wistful for the old days of cameras and film where you’d get your pics developed and immediately label the good ones and weed out the awful ones. I have good intentions every week to delete the duplicates (almost always of Nala) and screenshots on my iphone. But I start and it’s very quickly overwhelming so I quit. I tell myself it’ll be the legacy I leave my kids.
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I would assert that you are quite photogenic, Becky! Not as photogenic as Nala, but that’s a high standard!
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I will absolutely accept the compliment, Vickie, but I’m not telling Nala because she’s getting kind of a big head. Such a diva.
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One of the best things about digital photography is how easy it is to delete bad pictures of yourself. But I do keep a file of photos of myself that I actually like, so when the time comes, I have some available without searching through the thousands of photos on my computer to find an acceptable one.
Love the “last photo of the day” of you, Vickie. I know exactly what you’re thinking–and saying!
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Very smart of you to keep that file, Leslie!
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Hubs knew exactly what I was thinking, too — which is why that was the las photo of the day.
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I save them all, and I laugh at some of the pictures that come through my screen saver every so often.
I also don’t change my profile pictures that often. The one I’m using now on social media is 5 years old, and the one I’m using on my blog is over 10 years old. I don’t think about it that often.
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Scratch that. My blog has the 5 year old one. But I see my WordPress account is the 10+ year old one.
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To be clear, Mark, no one here has changed in the las five or ten years, lol!
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I delete the lousy photos but keep everything else in the cloud. Every year or so, I organize them. That’s when I’m reminded how many photos of kitty Maria I take!
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But those kitty photos! Aw…
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I delete all the horrible photos on my phone and make others (well, close family members) delete theirs. After extracting those, I put everything on the computer, though I really should weed through those…
My kids have recently started editing my photos, too, so a perfectly normal shot could turn into me with colored hair, extra accessories, and other interesting revisions.
P.S. I really should get a new author pic sometime; I can foresee the awkwardness in my future when people won’t recognize me from the cover photo…
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Years ago a writer’s group pal opened a book on her stack of library books and noted a successful mystery writer’s author photo. She said, “that photo has to be more than 10 years old — and she’s wearing sunglasses!” I now understand why an author may wear sunglasses in her author photo!
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Vickie, this is hilarious! and love that last pic. I have pix from the dawn of time saved. It feels like. If I I don’t delete immediately, they’re backed up forever. There are pictures of rashes and open sores in my photos file. But I’m too lazy to delete them.
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Aw, these photos make me miss seeing your face in person, Vickie! ❤
I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate taking photos–and being in them. The result: I have no interest in the selection process and thus let the photographic chips fall where they may. I do love how photos make for a handy time capsule. I've uttered phrases like, "I loved those denim gauchos!" and "I remember borrowing that sweater from my bestie!" (happy sigh)
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Toss the old photos, Kathy. But you should hold on to those gauchos!
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I just went to the doctor for a Wellness check. They have a photo of me from 1995 and I love it, but last Thursday they took a more recent one. I know I won’t like it and will have to live with it. We have photos from when cameras weren’t digital until now when they are. We keep them all. Why? I do not k now, but I am getting ready to go through all the print photos to digitize and may get rid of the bad ones then. They will all then go into storage photo boxes.
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