ugliness

My ugliest ID photo by far to date was the one on my Department of Homeland Security card—I sent in a nice enough photo with my application but somehow it was transformed so as to make me look like a bloodthirsty monster who might indeed want to blow up things. Anyway, I now have a new contender: my Bodleian reader’s card. There are many problems. First, something like an inch of rain fell on me on my walk there. Looking like a drowned rat perhaps wasn’t the most auspicious start. Second, there was a huge window to my side that created a great deal of glare all over my wet face. Third, the camera was positioned somewhere below my chin looking up. Fourth, in order to be able to take a picture from that vantage point, it had to have a rather wide-angle lens. The overall effect is quite unusual. It’s a good thing I don’t much care about how I look on my pieces of identification.

Sydney