New Portrait

Look! I've finally started using my cameras again.

For the past few years, I've taken a self portrait just before my birthday, so that I can see how my appearance has changed. I think I started doing it when I looked in the mirror one day and saw more of my dad than I did of myself.

On New Year's Day, I decided to stop shaving, so by the time that my 60th birthday rolled around, I had a pretty full beard. I liked how the beard looked but a few days after my birthday, I was bothered by how the whiskers above my top lip would reach into my mouth. I would constantly stick my tongue out, touching the bottom of those whiskers.

Even though I trimmed the beard, the moustache whiskers were ever-present around my mouth, and they really started bothering me. And every time I kissed DW goodnight, she'd say "Ew," which kinda hurt.

DW hated the beard. And so, shortly after I shared my birthday selfies on my blog, the beard was gone.

Last week, after receiving the first haircut since I took my self portraits, I decided it was time to update my photo. This is 60, plus a month and five days:

I started off by using a white background. I had one of my D-SLRs on a tripod and used a WiFi connection to my smartphone to focus the camera and snap the photo. For some reason, however, when I switched to a black background, the camera didn't want to focus on me, even though I was in the exact-same position as I was with the white background.

I ended up turning off the auto-focus function of the camera and manually setting the distance of the camera from my position. Because I was using the Nikon app on my smartphone to take the shots, they were automatically downloaded to my phone, so I edited the images with Snapseed.

One of these days, I'll download the RAW files onto my computer and use my laptop to edit the files.

One of these days.