Author photo shoot - Why is that thing pointing at me?

Talk about upside down!  After a career spent orchestrating photo shoots for authors I was publicizing I went to one yesterday where the camera was pointed at...me.  All the times I said "Relax, have fun with it!" to a squirming subject boomeranged right back at me.  As a publicist I was a stickler for expression - what a writer took 400 pages to express I wanted to see with one glance at his face - a knowing, a sense of humor, or vulnerability, or wisdom, depending on the person (and sometimes all of that at once).  

Wow, that's hard to do!  In a public place, with people pausing to look on curiously, I looked at the camera and tried to feel natural.  It was hard, until I realized that the lady behind the camera, was smiling at me.

Snapshot of the radiant Alison Sheehy by Patty Chang Anker

Yes, the lovely, radiant Alison Sheehy was my photographer, and she never stopped smiling.

When I realized that, I started thinking about her, and that made me think about all the lovely, radiant people in the book, and that made me smile and smile and SMILE!

But at the end of the shoot, I couldn't resist taking my more comfortable place behind the camera, to snap a picture of Alison.  She, the consummate professional, never stopped shooting, so she got this moment too:

Photo credit: Alison Sheehy

We can't wait to share the pictures with you!