It Was The Light, It Was The Angle

I am tall and I am thin
Of an enviable height
And I’ve been known to be quite handsome
From a certain angle and a certain light
– “O’Malley’s Bar,” Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
After stepping off the elliptical machine, I officially finished my Captain America-inspired workout yesterday morning sometime around 4:30 AM.
In talking about the results I attained from my month-long commitment to the routine, I mentioned that there is no documentary evidence of said results in the form of pictures.
That’s primarily because there’s no one to take the pictures, and my attempts to do so myself – yes, I did actually try taking some pictures – didn’t really pan out.
Some of that was due to issues of timing and blocking and whatnot, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that a lot of the results just aren’t visible in photos.
In particular, the gains in terms of tone and definition.  They just don’t show up in photographs.  Ultimately I end up looking like the same shapeless mass I’ve always been.
For the results to be seen, I require a certain angle and a certain light.
In my bedroom, with the light above and behind me, for example, my reflection looks pretty cut in the mirror.  In my bathroom, with the light in front of me, not so much.
Anyway, getting back to 4:30 AM on Friday, I had finished up my workout, taken off my sweat-soaked shirt, and I was standing in the kitchen, taking some painkillers (which would be needed as the day wore on), drinking my post-workout protein shot, and taking my creatine supplements.
I happened to catch my shirtless reflection in the kitchen window, and I found myself really wishing I could capture that image to share with the world, because damn.
Much of it was illusion, of course – as Nick says later in the song quoted above when he catches his reflection and sees how handsome he looks, it was the light, it was the angle – and I’m sure the exhaustion was playing tricks on my mind, but I really wished that I looked like that all the time.
*Sigh*  Oh well.