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Young Me Now Me

Posted by
| July 5, 2016

me-then-now

When I followed the link from this tweet from Alec Corous Dr. Alec Couros

I knew I had to make it into a DS106 Daily Create. Sure it was from 2008, and I am not sure if Ze Frank did or is still doing the book, but that’s now what matters as much as the prompt:

Find a photo from when you were young.

Try and recreate that photo as you are now.

The most important thing to capture is the expression on your face and the position of your body.

And thus today’s DS106 Daily Create

I knew at the time I wanted to use this photo of me taken at the corner of the house I grew up in Baltimore. I so recognize the details there, the green lawn, the fence for the Lawson’s backyard pool, the flower bed at the back of our house:

Young me, Baltimore, maybe 1968? 1970?
Young me, Baltimore, maybe 1968? 1970?

I am guessing at the year. I might be wrong. As if this were a test. I cannot quite make out whats on my t-shirt, it looks like a baseball logo.

In trying to reproduce, I looked for a location that would work. The corner of my current home on the deck worked well, as it was in shadow like the original. And I happened to be wearing green shorts. And surprise, I have a white DS106 t-shirt (thanks Todd!).

A few of my test shots for now me.
A few of my test shots for now me.

Positioning the camera was tricky. I used my iPad with the camera on self-timer. For reference, I had the original photo on my phone. On a few I was cropped wrong. On others, my shirt was rumpled. On all, my gut was too big. Oh well.

The one I settled on was this:

Now me, huh. Little has changed.
Now me, huh. Little has changed.

I opened the original in photoshop, and expanded the canvas to allow room for the new photo. I duplicated the original one, made a layer mask of the area inside the polaroid frame and imported the “now me photo”. A little bit of resizing got it where I wanted. I did a bit of clone brushing to remove the distracting overhead, the hanging bells, and gutter drain behind my head.

Then I used a Photowarming filter, a nit of lighting to try and get the color tone to match. Added a little text for captioning (that’s the layer stroke effect with the color of the polaroid frame that makes it stand out a bit more).

Call it done.

This is a great exercise in working with details, trying to match etc, and a fantastic exercise. I’m enjoying seeing the other responses show up, check them out at http://daily.ds106.us/tdc1640/ — these are just beyond doing things quick and easy, this is the #ds106 way:

and of course, the best part of #ds106 is that people can do these any way they think works. Kevin stays true to his comic style:

This is why #ds106 continues to be one of the few things on the internet that are not full of weary dread (my bias is showing, sue me)

Top / Featured Image: A composite of one of my kid photos and one I tried to recreate today. If it matters, I totally license this as CC-BY-WHY as Creative Commons By Attribution Why WOuld Anyone Ever Reuse This!

The post “Young Me Now Me” was originally emerged from the primordial ooze and first walked on land at CogDogBlog (http://cogdogblog.com/2016/07/young-me-now-me/) on July 5, 2016.

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