the official image conundrum

A conundrum for me is always my picture. As a "public figure" I have to have an image. Unfortunately, if you look up "William F. DeVault" images on the web, you get nothing or next to nothing.

In the first case, I don't take good pictures. Even when I was a skeletally-thin teenager, I was not photogenic (there is one really good set of pictures of me, taken for my Senior Picture at Morgantown High School by local lensman Danny Friend, I shall see if I can dig them up today.

Case in point: This first shot. The beard and mustache are about where I have them now...the pulled back hair suggests the ponytail you can't see...the starkness of the black and white is good...but it isn't very romantic. Some call this the "demon" look.
It is the poet of INVOCATO, maybe even Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion, but not of The Morgantown Suite Poems or The Compleat Panther Cycles. This shot is about two years old and was taken in Salinas, California. As I recall it was taken with a very cheap digital camra and I had to process the hell out of it in Kai's PhotoSoap to make it anything.

How about this one? It has made it into the rotation of my "official" head shots. Taken just last year in Diamondhead, Mississippi, a town that was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina. I had shaved off the mustache and cut back the beard. This is the shot the Apppalachian Education Initiative used in their "Art&Soul" book...in fact, this shot was taken for that very purpose. It doesn't show the facial hair enough, but has a nice visual texture to it. Not bad for an old guy...the truth of the matter is, if I hide my grey hair (something which has been suggested to me, but I have resisted, I started going grey at 17...I am, if fatally flawed as a person, at least "keeping it real") I look about 35. Which is about 18 years older than I feel most days.

This one is also about two years old or so. It shows the grey hair, but at the time it had been trimmed shorter than usual...and I am smiling. I sometimes use this as my headshot. It is a little grainy, but it also has a warmth to it. It was cropped from a shot of I and my siblings. This is the "normal guy" - the accessible shot. I come across as fairly normal (an illusion, to be sure). I am not adverse to using a smiling shot, I just would like one a little better. I've never been 1000 per cent happy with my smile, but it is a smile and more likely to be viewed with kindness. I am not a monster, a demon or a devilkin. My major gripe is that I was about 30 pounds heavier in this shot...and it wasn't the camera adding the weight, it was the comfort food in the death throes of a marriage.

This was an artsy shot we did a couple of years ago. Coated my face in this glistening gel and snapped some high-contrast shots....visually interesting but ultimately only useful for very abstract purposes...you wouldn't recognize this guy walking into the bar. Besides, the gel felt icky. And, this was between mustaches.

Hey, Dude...this is The Romantic Poet of the Internet(tm), California-style.
Er, well, no. The shot was taken in Mississippi and my hair has never been that colour. When we "solarized" the shot, the white hair turned lemon-yellow. This has been used from time to time as an official shot as it imparts a certain West Coast mystique. I liked the original shot better, but somewhere in the looting of my possessions as I fled Mississippi, many shots were lost...that one being one of them. Many shots were lost. Somehow, though, I did end up with what seems to be every photo from every photo shoot my ex-wife ever had...I don't look at them, that would be unhealthy, but I'd bet her portfolio did not survive the Hurricane and would love to get them to her, somehow...so if you have a connection to her, let her know. I think I even have our wedding shots, someplace.

Hey, who's the cross dressing kid? Me. Five years old, probably scarred for life. My Mother is a seamstress and she was making a dress for my cousin Darlene. She needed someone to try it on, so she called me over, put it on me...and Dad grabbed the camera (yes, that's my Mom in the picture)...I cannot tell you how many times my Mom dragged this out to show any girl I brought home.

Maye I should just stick with this one?