TUTT + 1 - Topic: Faces

Faces.  What an interesting choice Mariette made this week, and you could go so, so many places with it.  Mariette snapped a pic of her daughter playing video games:

Mariette, I think this is an exquisite photograph.  The light on her face is so soft, her eyes twinkle and draw you in and she looks so engrossed.  I think you nailed it my dear, it's lovely.  About that photography class . . .

Claire remembered a photo shoot she did a year ago when Christine visited from South Africa, bringing these four girls together for the first time in ages.  Claire said she drove them nuts photographing them, can you tell?

What a fun photo - I know how it is when you know the moment is special and you want to catch it in your hands (or camera) and hold onto it forever.  I have driven a few people crazy myself, but there is nothing nicer when you are feeling glum to look back at these otherwise forgotten moments and re-live the joy!

My dear sister in-law went to eggstra special lengths to capture faces.  I love that it wasn't enough to just draw the faces on with a marker (that would be 'koki' in South African language, a far more expressive word), she colored them in too.  I think they are super sweet and a little eggcentric, eggcellent effort Linda!

As for me, I don't know, sometimes I think all I ever do is complain but really!  I think a broken transmission, hurricane, and back to school all in one week entitles me, don't you?  I made all the TUTT + 1 chickadees late this week because we had no power and I know we are uber dependant on energy and fossil fuels but after losing it for a few days, I now KNOW, you know?  Thanks ladies for your patience, here is my photo:

This is from the pizza box of our favorite pizza place (as I said girls and boys, not all pizza places are created equal - I'm just saying . . .) - Capone's.  Named for Al Capone, notorious Italian gangster from Chicago in the early 1900's during the years of prohibition when the sale of alcohol was illegal, so was the manufacture, transport, import export . . . well, you get the picture.  I told the girls that this theme, my photo, and current events all tie up together very nicely on our side of the world and here's why.  The state of New Jersey is currently reviewing legislature around the identification of baddies from police line-ups.  They are saying that it is an unreliable source of information. 

Try this, while stopped at a robot aka traffic light take a glance at a person walking by on the sidewalk and look away while you try to describe what they were wearing, how tall they were, their gait or any unusual features.  Then look back and see how accurate you were.  In high stress situations our recall is even worse, but it goes deeper than that.  They have done some psychological studies (of course they have) over a number of years and all based on previous cases where wrongful convictions were overturned once DNA testing proved murderers were in fact, not murderers at all but actually innocent citizens - in almost all of the cases identification through a police line-up is what sealed the case.  So in these studies, they had a look at how we humans recognize and recall the faces of people we meet.  Interestingly enough, we have an easier time recalling people who look like us, are the same age, have the same color hair or ethnicity and are similar in height and weight.  You can show us ten people that look like us and we can easily tell them apart.  If there is a huge age difference or if they are of another ethnic origin, we don't do so good.  Show us ten people who look very different to us and they all look the same, in those instances we need to see their faces a few times to make recall accurate.  So, to summarize, everybody that looks the same is totally different, and the people that look different are all the same - capiche?

Of course, other considerations in line-ups are the environment in which the line-up is conducted, who is with you at the time, their body language etc. etc. etc. but I thought the above was very interesting, especially when we were photographing faces this week.  And Al Capone was a criminal.  And his picture is faceless.  Told you it all weaves a good story, but since faces are also full of expression and tell their own story, here is another photo from our pizza place and this one makes Al Capone come alive, a real person, with a good-time enigmatic personality and a flagrant disregard for the rules - his face says all that don't you think?

That's my take on this theme, next week will be pure and clean!