Rambly Rambly, With Pictures

Here's Athena preparing for the Miss Pre-Teen Goth State Finals; if she wins, then it's off to the nationals in Atlantic City, where she will glower and pout with competitors from all the states and Puerto Rico! Wish her luck, won't you?

I'm just kidding. There is in fact no Miss Pre-Teen Goth competition, and if there were, let's just say that a kid from rural Ohio would be an incongruous competitor to say the least. Also, in real life Athena is about as gothy and dour as fluffy duckling; two seconds after she took this picture she was bouncing around the house as if she here made primarily of helium and springs. Which to be entirely honest with you is what I prefer at this age. She'll have plenty of time to be moody and uncommunicative as a teenager; for now, we prefer her to be a bundle of energetic fun.

The real reason I posted the picture, incidentally, is to note just one of the ways technology sneaks up on us. Here's the original of the picture above:

Note the presence of refrigerator, kitchen, and various boxes and doodads, not to mention color (and specifically, brown eyes) -- all extracted for effect in Photoshop in about, oh, three minutes, with the violet eyes added in taking about another 90 seconds or so. I wouldn't go so far as to suggest the final picture is professional quality portraiture, but it's definitely a cleaner and more striking presentation than a kid hanging out in front of the fridge, and it's the sort of thing anyone can do (pending spending a little time with a photo-editing program).

Normally I don't spend any sort of time thinking about the fact I can do all this; I just do it. But every now and then it sneaks up on me that this is a technology that wasn't largely available outside of professional circles even ten years ago, and now it's just something anyone can do. It's right up there with the fact that just about anyone with a cell phone has those vaunted picture phones we kept getting promised in "the future"; we just don't think about it as anything special.

Here's a fun exercise: Pretend you're back at the year of your birth (in my case, 1969) and see how much of the stuff that's part of your everyday life simply isn't there. First up for me, of course, would be the computer (yikes), and then things just explode from there. I think if I actually had to live in 1969, I'd just about go insane.

Yes, this is pretty far afield from a picture of my kid. Welcome to my brain.

Written by johnmscalzi Blog about this entry

This entry has 14 comments: (Add your own)

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6/8/07 8:27 PM | Permalink

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#13 Comment from alphamoon65
12/1/05 3:39 PM | Permalink

She reminds of the little girl off of the movie "The vampire Lestat" only the first pic. I see plenty of goth kids in my area of ohio...whoa is me...lol I think Athena is adorable....mine are 18 and 19....not so cute right now. lol
Dwana
http://journals.aol.com/alphamoon65/MoonlightDrive/
#12 Comment from dreambeliever2
12/1/05 2:37 PM | Permalink

She is very pretty, no matter WHAT you do to her photos! (hehe) John, is there any way that you can explain how you got the background to go dark like that, and how you changed her eye color? I just got Adobe Photoshop Elements (3.0) and I'm fiddling around with it, but it's totally overwhelming! :)
#11 Comment from baiuloksana
12/1/05 1:40 PM | Permalink

Pre-teen goth. HAHAHAHAHA! That's great.

-30-
#10 Comment from mariebm56
12/1/05 10:41 AM | Permalink

YOu did a great job editing the photo.
Athena looks great!
You are so multi talented~
Marie
http://journals.aol.co.uk/mariebm56/PhotographsMemoriesToo
http://photographsmemoriestoo.blogspot.com/

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Rambly Rambly, With Pictures