I have a Facebook friend who's always posting "selfies". She went to the same school I did, but she's several years older than me, and I don't really remember her all that well. In her "selfies", she looks much, much younger than the 55-ish years old she actually is. I just thought "good for her", and didn't really think anything else about it. But one day something occurred to me. Her "selfies" were always taken at an odd, unnatural angle. Hmmm.
A couple of months ago, her husband posted a photo of her that he'd taken while she was asleep. Oh my. She had very dark circles under her eyes, all sorts of wrinkles, and looked her actual age ... if not older!
She didn't even look like the same person. (I bet she was furious that he'd posted that picture!)
That's when I realized what she'd been doing in her "selfies". She was pointing her face in such a way that the lighting and/or camera flash erased those dark circles, and the majority of her wrinkles were "stretched out" so that they didn't show nearly as much. I wouldn't doubt that Photoshop was involved, too. I had to giggle just a little bit. Her husband tattled on her, either accidentally or on purpose!
(I suspect the latter!) It's perfectly natural for people to want to look good in their photos, but hers were just a little TOO perfect, if you know what I mean! LOL!
Not long afterwards, she posted a photo of herself riding a roller coaster, claiming it was the one in a local amusement park. Something about the photo caught my eye. She was wearing a modern shoulder harness ... one of those big padded types that pulls down over your head ... and the roller coaster in her photo was a metal one. The roller coaster she CLAIMED to be riding is a vintage wooden one that has only a metal lap bar. Then I noticed that her head was too large for her body, the skin tones didn't match, and there were other signs of poor editing that made it a dead giveaway. Yep, she'd obviously Photoshopped that picture! She'd taken a photo of a modern roller coaster (one she'd probably found online somewhere), and had Photoshopped her head into it. ROFL!
She still posts "selfies" all the time, but I don't take them too seriously anymore.
