Getting the “action” shot

When I started putting together things for my online dating profiles I did my research. I’m not one to leave things to chance and have no qualms about learning from other’s mistakes, so I promptly jumped onto Google and searched out some of the advice out there.

Armed with that (often conflicting) advice I trawled through my photo archives and promptly got very annoyed with myself. Almost every photo was either totally horrible or had my ex-wife in it. Almost every. Single. One.

You see, in the past I never thought I’d have any need to worry about how I looked in photos. I was in a happy marriage with a woman who loved me whether I looked weird or not, so I never had to do any of the classic poses or face contortions in order to help attract a mate.

Now it was a different story, however. There was no way – no way at all – that I was ever going to meet someone without online dating, so somehow or other I needed to find at least a handful of shots of me which showed me in something of a good light.

And not just all the same shot, either. This seems to be the list to choose from:

• A face-shot/selfie (to show you aren’t a total munter)
• A shot of you with friends (you’re funny and charming enough to have friends, right?!)
• A shot of you with an animal
• A shot of you with a small child that you make VERY CLEAR is not yours
• A shot of you with an elderly relative
• A full-length shot of your body
• An action shot of you doing something exciting
• A topless selfie of you in a bathroom

Okay, that last one seems to be what people do have rather than what they should. However, the penultimate one is where I’ve fallen down. I’ve got a few acceptable shots of my face (or at least as acceptable as they’ll ever be), a full-length shot of me in a suit with a small child clutched to my legs (though he is my own rather than borrowed) and a shot of me doing the Crystal Maze, but I have nothing at all of me in action actually doing anything exciting.

I used to do exciting things. I used to play Australian Rules Football. I used to work out and swim. I used to go on cycling holidays through the Alps. I have travelled the world – literally. But all of that was five or more years ago. What have I done lately?!

No, it wasn’t good enough. I needed an action shot. I thought about staging one; rubbing some mud on my face, attaching a number to my chest and heading to the park to pretend I was a mud-run type of guy. Or perhaps do a full John Terry full-kit-wanker and invade a random football match in a kit, pretending I was playing.

Or perhaps I wouldn’t need to. Perhaps I already had something coming up which might be suitable, where I’d be heading to somewhere interesting and identifiable and which might stand out a little.

Perhaps Mount Everest would do, after all.

Yep, as this post goes live I’ll be halfway up Mount Everest, on my way to Base Camp. At least I hope I will; I hope my knees won’t collapse on me and that altitude sickness doesn’t mean I get helicoptered down, but the ambition is definitely there.

So there it is – my action shot. Unfortunately for me it’ll still have my real face in it, and even worse it’ll have my not-shaved-or-showered-or-slept-in-days face in it, but it’s the best I can offer at this point.

Now I just need to remember to take my camera with me…