Raven Ambition's Aspergers BLOG

8/3/2015

Having Fun With Photos

Millions of years ago during the Pangea timeframe, when land masses were one supercontinent all close together, Connecticut (the state I live in) was flush up against Mauritania and Morocco. Today of course, there are oceans between us. And yet I had a banana today that grew in Ecuador, with pineapple chunks harvested in Costa Rica, cherries from Canada and fresh blueberries from Michigan. My fruit salad is better traveled than me! How wondrous is it that this is possible and yet we don’t think twice about it. I hope never to take fresh delicious produce for granted because this happens:

Mutant flowers, a mutant vegetable and deformed fish from the Fukushima nuclear disaster:

These photos look like they’ve been digitally manipulated, however, sadly, they have not. It’s great fun to use programs like Photoshop and Corel to remake photos.

The following two photos HAVE been manipulated: The first one was made by my grandson; who took a selfie and then fooled around with an I-Phone app program. The second picture is a cartoon that the same grandson made; with a similar app. It’s supposed to be his father. And you know what? It’s a great resemblance. His picture is below it for comparison.

If only I could wear cardboard crabs on my arms out in public . Let me explain. The four of us (Al, two of the grandkids and myself) went to an aquarium recently and posed for a picture in front of one of those green screens; the ones where they add a scene in afterward… sort of like photoshopping. When we finished making the tour of all the aquarium exhibits, we went to the front desk to “pick up our souvenir photo.” We paid an exorbitant fee to own the picture. There we were, with a whale and various sea creatures (where the green screen had been) superimposed into the photograph behind us. I hate the picture. Not only are my arms scarred from autoimmune disease, but they just seem… disfigured and kind of weird; like the Fukushima deformities. (I am not posting it here!) I gave my son a small copy of the photo anyway, to put on his fridge, because his son (my grandson pictured above) is in the picture.

“It’s not a bad picture really,” I said to my son. “Except that my arm is huge! I didn’t realize it had become so… bumpy in profile.”

“I know what we could do,” he said, “I’ll make a cardboard cutout of a little crab and tack it on over your elbow. People will think it’s part of the scene.”

“Great idea! If only I could wear cardboard crabs on my arms out in public, in real life,” said I.

This son I speak of, has a habit of photoshopping pictures of me. I’ve tried this past-time myself. Here are a few poor attempts:

They’re not very good; I know…

And then there’s these… One is Al and one is me:

I like to post this sort of thing of myself on Facebook for the holidays and just for fun… These altered photo manipulations start with an impromptu, quite unexpected photo being taken. For example, a few years ago, my son captured my picture just as I was enjoying a huge hearty yawn. Over the next few weeks, these two pictures appeared in my FB newsfeed… Yes that’s me!

Here I was, minding my own business, when my son snapped a picture of me. Uh-oh. Alarm bells went off. My hunch was right. Within days the following picture turned up in my inbox: (That.s me in profile and my grandson in the middle.)

My son fell asleep on my couch the other day and guess who took his picture? (His son did.) What do you suppose I should do with the picture of him? I think his face would look pretty good as the Mona Lisa… Or as The Thinker.

David?

The Girl With The Pearl Earring? Yeah that would be the funniest I think…

The 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima was a disaster, that’s a fact. But are the vegetable mutants and deformed daisy pictures a hoax? Some people would have you think so. The photos were posted from a Korean website and the posts did not include where exactly this stuff was farmed… Real or hoaxed? I’m sure I will never know. But the strawberries I ate this summer came from Connecticut. I know. I picked them myself.