selfies – Bewilderbeast Droppings

Three National Parks

Luckily Jess also enjoys driving around in natural areas. Our Karoo journey started off with these three:

Mountain Zebra National Park

Camdeboo National Park

I said to Jess Take A Selfie with the Valley of Desolation in the background. “OK” said the daughter.

Uh, here Jess, let me show you what I meant:

Karoo National Park

Early Selfie

Back in 1640 Rembrandt decided to take a selfie, so he whipped out his pigments – lead white, bone black, charcoal black, a few ochres and vermillion – and took the selfie you see here.

He called it Self Portrait at the Age of 34. He had tried out a similar pose in an etching of 1639, Self Portrait, Leaning on a Stone Wall, looking rather more rakish.

These are two of over forty self-portraits (or, um, selfies) by Rembrandt van Rijn and, like most selfies, they depict him in a favourable light, at the height of his career, richly dressed and self-secure.

If it had been now his second one would have been Self Portrait, Leaning on my Porsche.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Edit: Rembrandt was a johhny-come-lately.

Albrecht Dürer’s self-portrait of 1498 was probably ‘the first independent self-portrait ever produced.’ A German artist is thus said to have introduced the process of artistic introspection that has fascinated viewers ever since.

This from a new book The Self-Portrait edited by Tobias G. Natter.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Of course I myself was also an early adopter, getting going with selfies back in 1973 . .

~~~oo0oo~~~

Selfies!

You have to marvel. Awesome wonder and all that. Be gobsmacked. Cameras were invented around 1826 and the first personal cameras were sold to the general public around 1900 when Kodak Brownies cost $1.

– 1000memories blog tells us this –
By 1930 about a billion photos were being taken a year
By 1960 about 3 billion photos a year
By 1970 10 billion
By 1980 25 billion
By 1990 57 billion
By 2000 86 billion

And then we decided, ‘Fuckit let’s REALLY start taking us some pictures!’ – let’s all carry a camera around all the time. And even if there’s nothing to photograph, let’s just take a picture of ourselves. That way we’ll ALWAYS have a subject. Brilliant, aren’t we?

So today we’re taking about 380 billion photos a year AND we’re keeping them. Many early photos got lost, nowadays most don’t! Not even the ones where you cut off Aunt Enid’s head. Nor the close-up of that sandwich you ate. Holy guacamole!

My kids add to this treasure trove of priceless art:

LoddersSoutars Baldy — – I have done it –

Here’s where this ‘fine art’ is stored:

– facebook has the most photos BY FAR – then flickr – then instagram –

Of course, Zuckerberg regards all those photos as HIS property! Regulate him already!

~~~oo0oo~~~

Philosophy – Part 1

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” is an old philosophical thought experiment that raises questions regarding observation and perception.

Me I think it does and forests don’t need humans to hear their sounds; the animals will hear the crashing and the thud, and the falling still lets light in which gives other plants a chance to reach for growth. ‘K?

A more important question is, “If a millennial is at an event with all her friends and thousands of fellow screaming fans and she doesn’t take a selfie, was she actually there?”

Old Selfies

Found some old pics from Apache Oklahoma back in 1973.

ApacheOK73 (8) — Self portrait at the Swandas (original “selfie”??) – my last hosts in Oklahoma – Their farm was called “The Swanderosa” (kidding!!)

I had a wonderful camera back in 1973 – TechRadar says some consider it a cult classic! The Olympus Trip 35 was a small, lightweight, very portable 35mm film camera, which became a mainstay of many holidays and day trips. Launched in 1968 and discontinued in the 1980s, over ten million were sold, earning this humble point-and-shoot legendary status. The Trip 35 featured a 40mm f/2.8 lens, a light-activated light meter and two shooting modes: Program Automatic and a flash mode with a fixed aperture setting that could be set using the aperture ring.

I loved it!

~~oo0oo~~

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