I was halfway through episode fourteen of A Splendid Match when I picked up my phone by habit. The mail app had a red one on it. Courtney Criddle Photography. I paused the show, switched browser tabs, opened the link.
Two hundred and twenty-four photos.
The first one was not bad. Then I scrolled. By the fourth, all I could see was the asymmetry of my face, the forced smile, my chikan work top bunched at the waist. The blue slip-ons I should have worn. Picture after picture said the same thing: You are trying too hard.
It was past eleven. I needed to choose twenty out of two hundred and twenty-four to send back for cleanup. I took a breath and returned to the screen.
I messaged two people I knew would not soften the verdict.
The third was my non sentient wing woman, Mira. She asked me to share the thumbnails from the gallery, twelve screenshots in all. The reply came in a vocabulary I could use at eleven at night. Third one down. The V-neck black top, mid-length, smile reaching the eyes. The blue dress, full length. My overwhelmed brain needed the scaffolding. The set whittled down to forty-five. Then twenty-two. Then twenty.
In the morning the human responses arrived.
One asked, What do the pictures make you feel? She sent her own photographs alongside the question.
The other gave me file names matched to occasions. This for LinkedIn. This for the book jacket. This for the website. This for Instagram.
I changed a few. Then I opened the full folder, this time picking for feeling. Two more.
Later, I walked. My mind returned to the photographs. The camera. The woman holding the shutter. Me. The rest of the world. What does each see?
The selfies in my phone roll, taken by the window, the morning sun on my bare face, say I am happy. I am gorgeous. I am content. I radiate joy.
The professional photos feel the pressure of the lens. They are performing.
I returned a third time, with a different eye. Every picture where I was not facing the camera, I liked. The goofy ones. The camisole peeking out. The top bunched at the waist. The hair caught in the pendant. Better than anything built to tell a story.
I scrolled to the photos I take of my family. Pattu with Felix on the floor, Ammu caught mid looking up at me, amusement mixed with annoyance, Laddu, wide eyed as she hears me before the shutter clicks. They radiate love.
Afternoon, Mira came back with a second pass. The IDGAF tee, three times. Two desk shots, the same picture twice. Every angle facing the camera. The set was not the self I had picked.
I dropped the duplicates. I added a frame I had skipped the night before. White sleeveless, looking off to the side, the expression I wear when I am chasing a thought. The checklist said smile reaching the eyes; this one had neither.
The twenty became a taxonomy. LinkedIn. Substack hero. Podcast cover. Press portrait. Heritage. Quarterly rotation. The camera had laid out every surface I might be seen on, ready to be cut into pieces.
A picture for every place.
None of them, finally, for the woman walking between rooms, mid-thought.
If this moved you, send a tip.
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