021-Self Portrait Quality

021-Self Portrait Quality, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

When you see the pictures people take that other people like, often they react to the youthfulness, and the 'norms' of Body Mass Index and Beauty. What is easier for the shapely 20 year old to take a shot of their legs and think they have created Art? Try doing the same when you are 50 or if you are considered medically overleaf!


BTW: this is not a graph in the traditional sense, this is an expression of my Art. As a result I am not going to give you a full explanation, that is not the purpose of Art.

The further away from the 20 norm you are, the harder it is to find an appreciative audience, and you have to put more in to your Art to achieve anything like the same level of acceptance. That's good - if you can do that then you are a lot further down the road of Art than the 20-norms.

If you are a 20, then, sorry, but you are going to have to try a helluva lot harder than flashing your cleavage or wardrobe to impress me.

27-Smile... It's Friday

The end of my rainbow, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Smiling, and a shot straight out of the camera.

Always be prepared to drop an idea when it begins to fall apart. This one was supposed to show the top half of my head in the main mirror, and my smiling mouth offset in the small mirror, but it was just too difficult to set up without the shower appearing in shot. So I dumped it, and went for putting the beer in the small mirror and then doing a series of shots until I was in shot - and by some luck I picked up some of the flash on the side of my face.

The camera I set to the 'dusk' automatic setting after quickly trying out several other settings to get the best colour - the indoor setting was washing out the colours, while the beach and the sunset settings made everything go too red/yellow.

3: Just Shots

Well, if I could get away with yesterdays, why not go the whole way, I thought. Originally I was going to take a shot of a small fridge-magnet taxi that came all the way from New York, but it turns out that the taxi idea was nothing more than a step to the one I needed to take. Today's group is about any picture that does not fit in any particular category, and I took the opportunity to use one of my favourite techniques - a collage. I was going to have ragged edges like it was ripped out of a magazine, but I did not really have the time to mess around or the necessary expertise with Gimp to get an adequately quality image.

I chose not to use the flash simply because my camera batteries needed recharging, but that muddy-green background effect is much like that you see with many portraits from the first half of the twentieth century, a suitable foil for the first exposure of my psoriasis. As I was putting the image together from the six shots I accepted, I began to notice how much it resembles one of those Hindu goddesses.