I don’t smile.

Well, wait, that’s not true. I do smile. But since I end up looking like a slightly inebriated satyr when doing so, I tend not to break out the big grin just ‘cause a camera’s turned my way.

It’s not an anti-picture thing; I’m not one of those people who make a big deal about being photographed. Doing so has always struck me as a kind of reverse-modesty: if you really don’t want people paying attention to you, just sit down and shut up. Let the shutterbugs take their dang photos and go away; it’s not like the camera is going to steal your soul or anything.

Unless, of course, you’re one of those people who do think that cameras will steal your soul. In that case, feel free to make a stink about it.

On that issue, I’m curious about how the soul-stealing thing works with digital cameras. I figure photocopying a normal picture doesn’t duplicate the soul, but as the music and movie people are fond of reminding us in their DMCA-loving way, digital technology lets us make perfect duplicates. Does that mean that copying a digital pictures gives you additional copies of a person’s soul? And if I play around with the image in Photoshop, am I, say, giving your soul a nifty little watercolor effect? And if I save the picture at a lower file resolution, am I left with a slightly degraded soul?

I seem to have wandered away from my original point (such as it was).

The in-house newsletter of Gruner + Jahr is doing an article on Oskar’s, the magazine your diligent scribe is toiling away on (for the next few weeks. Then I’m looking for a job. Know of any?) They sent a photographer to take a picture of the staff, and I swear, if the guy had told me to smile one more time, I was going to see exactly how far a telephoto lens could be inserted into the human body.

It didn’t seem to help matters when, the fifth time he implored us all to grin, I responded that I was smiling. He told me to smile more.

Why, exactly, do we want to see smirking mugs in every photo we come across? Sure, I enjoy working here, but it’s not like I walk around the place with the displayed teeth of a feces-consumer. (And where the heck did that phrase come from? Of all the people you’d think wouldn’t be grinning …) Couldn’t they just take a candid shot? or even a posed shot with whatever expressions we normally wear? If I felt like smiling, you know, I’d frickin’ already be doing so.

So you’re on warning. If, for whatever bizarre reason, you happen to be taking my picture anytime soon, just take the thing and go away, OK? Because from now on, photographers will get to chose between a) whatever expression is already on my face and b) whatever my favorite obscene gesture is that day.

Or maybe I’ll just start telling people that I think cameras actually are soul-stealing devices and I refuse to let them take what little bit of a soul I have left. With just a modicum of thought, I bet I could come up with a really cool rant on the topic.

‘Cause having people think you’re a raving loon is a great way to get ahead in life.