I have a very expressive face… and to top it off, I talk with my hands (I blame the Italian portion of my heritage).

I’ve always known this about myself, but hadn’t realised exactly how wild some of my facial expressions could be in normal conversation, until I saw the results of the cafe photo session from earlier in the year. Seeing the resulting photos of me chatting and debating was very confronting… fleeting moments of animation, captured for close and prolonged examination.

Thankfully, when I shared the photos with my friends, they all immediately responded with comments such as, “yep, I see that expression all the time”, or “that’s such an LL face.” It was very reassuring to know they identified the pics as the ‘me’ that they know and love.

The interesting, and kind of sad thing, was that my mum thought some of the photos didn’t really look like me. Just a reminder of how little we really get to see each other, living so far away.