Glamour Shots

The photos below are outtakes from a photo session I did for this article in DEMO Magazine. It was my first real photo shoot (probably my only ever photo shoot. I can't imagine photo shoots are a common thing for authors.) and I felt like I was on America's Next Top Model, mainly because it was freezing out (despite being early June) and I was incredibly sick and I still had to try to look fierce or pretty or something.

But the photographer, Chad McGavock was super cool and incredibly talented. He had excellent "visions" as my friend Eryn would call them, for how and where to pose me. And we did the shoot at night at the real Scoville Park. I think it captured the kind of doomed, dark feeling of Ballads of Suburbia, and the same look as the cover of the book even though the cover is not a picture of the real park. So I asked Chad to send me the outtakes so I could share them.

So here they are and I'm posting them because I really admire his photography. I feel really weird posting more pictures of me actually. I feel like I've been doing that a lot lately and it actually triggered an interesting blog entry that I wrote over on the MTV Books blog about self-esteem--mine through the years and the self-esteem of my characters. So yeah, go read that if you get a chance. I think it remains an important topic to talk about because all teens and probably *everyone* struggles with it.

But here are Chad's amazing photos, please click on them so you can see them larger and get the full effect: