Giving a Voice to the Silence offers positive angles to the issue that faces those with mental illness. Living with Schizo-Affective Disorder and being able to share my experiences with others, is the best way I know how to pay it forward. Life can be difficult, my goal is to bring a bit of hope to a place where many feel there is none.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

“S” is for Selfies #atozblogchallenge



It’s the new word for the 21st century; the selfie has taken on a life of its own, and everyone is on board.  As I thought about what write for the letter S, this is what came to mind; pictures of ourselves that we share with the world.  The official definition of a selfie is, “ A selfie is a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a hand-held digital camera or camera phone. Selfies are often shared on social networking services such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Tumblr. They are often casual, and are typically taken either with a camera held at arm's length or in a mirror.”

Today, everything is digital and we use that to our advantage.  There is the ability to touch up a picture before it is seen by anyone else, and lets us control how we are portrayed to the public.  The most popular photo now is the one we take of ourselves, or with us in a group we show who we are at that particular moment in time, no waiting anymore.  Surprisingly, though, this generation did not invent the selfie as we know it, the first photo was taken in 1839.  In 1900 with dawn of what was then new  technology, self-portraits  were taken by using a mirror, sound familiar?  

I think back to our amazement when Polaroid pictures were introduced, the idea of having instant pictures was more than we could have imagined then, and we took advantage of this new technology, yet the idea of taking photos of ourselves didn’t really come to mind.  First of all, there was no easy way to take a selfie then, and if you did it didn’t look right   No, I am from the days of the old 110 film and eventually 35mm, waiting days for the photos to come back from the developer and hoping they developed the way I had expected.  For me, there was a time of excitement and wonder as to what I would see when I opened the envelope and looked at each photo, remembering the moment in the time that it was taken. 

I am a fan of the digital, don’t get me wrong; I love having the ability to edit my photographs in various software programs until it looks just the way I want.  I do not think I would go back to regular film at this point; I have been spoiled.  I can wonder now what we will see in the future in term's photography, with the advances already made the sky seem to be the limit. 

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