SAY CHEESE – to delete or not to delete

A camera is stuffed in front of our faces and we all go: Emmentaller, Jarlsberg, Havarti, Gouda, Swiss, Blue Castello, Brie, American, Limburger, Mozzarella, and my all-time favorite: Newton’s Theory of Gravitation. Besides the silly one, these are all responses to the camera-holder’s encouragement for us to smile, by saying “cheese”. But why not just ask us to SMILE – duh?

For the longest time I thought we were asked to cheese because saying that word or the name of any kind of cheese, would shape my mouth into a grin, smile or smirk; but I was never sure it would. So I decided to read the names of all the cheeses in the world, in front of a handheld mirror; it took six days and three nights. Did you know that we have over 62 million different cheeses? (an approximate figure)… None of them left a smile on my face – what a waste of time, but now we know and you are welcome.

Around here we use cheese to get everybody’s attention before the button is pressed. Cheese is supposed to be funny, but quite honestly, I'm pretty bored with it, since I proved it doesn't work. So let’s see what kind of smiling encouragements they use in some other countries, shall we?

Cabbage (Bulgaria), olhao o passarinho (whatever that means (Brazil)), eggplant (China), omelet (Sweden), Little Bird (Serbia), Pepsi (Thailand), spaghetti or cheesecake (Germany), potato (Spain & Idaho), Gee it's expensive here (Disneyland), Smile or Else (North Korea), etc. So you see cheese is not universal at all; good knowledge, don't you think?

Interesting fact: we consume over 18 million metric ton of cheese annually. For those of you not using the metric system, that's a lot of cheese. But even that does not make me smile – it more so makes me puke and that doesn’t look good in a photo, does it? Well, enough about cheese…

Not much needs to be said before the clicking starts. We see a camera, phone, iPad, just about anything and we automatically scoop/herd/gather/assemble in front of any picture taking devise and opportunity, exposing enough ivory to light up a small city.

Noticed how we always smile in photos? Are we trying to make ourselves look smashing, charming and utterly happy for that 1/200 of a second no matter how crappy our day is going? Next time, notice how all those smiles disappear within 1/200 of a second after the photo is taken – rather interesting. And don’t you just hate it when the photo-taker can’t get it together for the longest time and our already strained smiles morph into painfully frozen grimaces? Yuk…

The funny thing is that we like to be photographed; we have no problems with that. But the other funny thing is, that we are extremely critical of the photographic images we see of ourselves and for silly reasons - really. We want to appear perfect, at least in a photo; we want to be exposed at our best - and even when that happens, our extreme critical judgement takes over - at least for me (and I have a reason).

With today’s digital photo possibilities, which can take pictures with just about anything, we are constantly exposed to being snapped, clicked and remembered forever or at least till the delete button do us part. At times we fight against being photographed (bad hair day, wrong clothes or icky istuff between teeth), but in spite of that, we still can’t wait to see the images of ourselves. And even when it’s a great photo, we scream very loud “HOLY TUNA” and scramble for the delete - and in many cases we regret that we did, approximately 1/200 of a second too late.

We have over 12,000 photos in our library and I like most of them. We enjoy taking photos of the kids, family, friends, flowers and other stuff around us, as well as pictures are perfect reminders of trips and travels. We can be a bit lax about composing the images as we snap them, because adjustments and repair can easily be applied later with the software we use (Photoshop) and its thousands of editing possibilities. Spinach eliminated from teeth in seconds. The busiest button in the program is called to delete or not to delete - or something like that; we use it relentlessly. Digital photography at its best.

But what do we really see? When we look at our own image in a mirror, we see a different me than the me we see in photos; and people around us see us even more "different" then that - so who am I really? comes to mind. In front of the mirror we can move around a bit and find that angle where we look our best (in our own opinion). But a photo pretty much nails us to the digital cross in one split second, cheese or no cheese; but at times we look smashing, don't you think? And at times everybody else thinks so too, which makes us feel real good.

I don’t like photos of myself because I don't have that magazine-model good looks. But it does not bother me at all - according to my psychiatrist. I am not photogenic to any extend, besides a few baby photos. 

I know two individuals who are utterly photogenic. It's impossible to take a photo of Johanna and Sara that is not awesome; all you have to do is click away. They are beautiful young women now (relax, they are family), but from they were little girls, that photogenic thing was so apparent. Very few people have that - I certainly don't, according to my psychiatrist, who is magazine-model handsome (but obviously a real jerk).

Cheese or no cheese, for the most we like to see ourselves in photos and that is just fine, really – as long as we can reach that option button called to delete or not to delete.

 Until next Monday – click click

So who says I'm not photogenic?

My psychiatrist is such a jerk.

Johanna - several years back

Me - 1832 or there about

Sara, about a year ago



IRONY OF THE WEEK:

He loved the sea, but was afraid of water

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