Be sure to get my good side

I love pictures taken by my children. Whether it's the low perspective, the complete candor of the moment, or the sneaky timing, the images are immediate and honest. And who doesn't need a bunch of pictures of boobs and nostrils? The boys even, in their charity, shake the camera body and smear the lens with butter, the better to blur my edges.

This one -- a shot I've used for half a year, to various ends -- was taken as I leaned in to buckle someone into a car seat. New haircut, decent lighting, no double chin! And the timing was perfect: immediately after this, I stood up too quickly and slammed my head into the door frame, scratching my sunglasses and driving the nose piece deep into my scalp. Good thing my Canon Digital Elph has a built-in profanity-reduction filter.

Some of us are not cut out for photography, and some are. My husband, for instance, has a wonderful sense of composition and timing, the patience and passion for gear research, and near-perfect recall for the uses of all buttons and levers. Plus he is part Luddite, part Gadget Guru, and embraces the full spectrum from large format film to cutting-edge digital. But me? Give me a pocket-sized point-and-shoot and I'll guarantee that one out of every hundred pictures is worth sharing with my mom.

And now, having surmounted the first two obstacles of blogging -- naming and profile picture selection -- I'll shut this one down early.