Thought I should share a bit about my last few profile pictures.
The above is my latest selfie. I decided to try something radically different: partial face focusing on one eye without my glasses. It sort of works. I say sort of because when it’s tiny, next to a Facebook comment for example, it looks kind of weird, as in: what is that?!
Then we have this one.
I think this is probably the favorite selfie I’ve shot. It’s a panorama in what is called the “Little Planet” view. I was standing just a few feet from the edge of the Pacific Ocean in the Marin Headlands. Just a couple of feet beyond the heavy gauge metal fence is a very precarious drop off to the jagged ocean coastline. The land that juts out on the extreme right, a little below center, of the photo is the Point Bonita Lighthouse.
And the final one for the year.
I took this photo in a restaurant (Knox Cafe) against a corrugated metal wall. One of my cousins told me my selfies made the remainder of the family suicidal because I never age while they age so terribly. Then my mother quickly told her, “Oh, Peggy. You know he uses Photoshop all the time!” I was shocked my mother even knew the name of Adobe’s photo-retouching app! And yes, I retouch all of my profile pics. (Actually, I post-process almost all of the pics I shoot.) Retouching your profile selfies is just good media PR management. [Evil grin] However, this photo actually was not edited in Photoshop! I used Facetune, an iOS app, and I was just learning how to use it. Messed up the photo terribly (didn’t know how to undo what I was doing) but I went with it anyway.
Speaking of Aging
I was at the bank yesterday. One of the young tellers was talking about “back in my day,” and everyone at the counter in chorus replied, “In your day?! Right! You’re way too young to say that.” I then told her of my vivid recollections of our getting our first color TV, which was a snowy mess with some vague hints of color when you could manage to delicately tune the station in well. She was dumbfounded. “No!!” she exclaimed sincerely. “You can’t be that old!” “Dear, I’m almost 60 years old.” I said to a grand round of, “No way! You can’t be that old.” from everyone at the counter. “More. More.” I demanded.
Yes, I’m rapidly approaching 60 and with the Florida sun-cooked skin to prove it. Photo retouching has become a way of life!