The perfect selfie...

Hey there! Time for a ramble...

So I had started on a new blog entry for the new year but personal circumstance and reality wholeheartedly distracted me from mundane babbling, I might save it for next year, it's good to recycle after all!

Regardless, if you are reading this then I hope your year is going slightly slower than mine and it is proving to be a fruitful and enjoyable.

And on to this particular ramble through my mind, I have been thinking a lot about culture and the rise and rise of selfies, they appear to be rather popular.

It seems you will rarely travel through either the online world or the real world without seeing them either being posted or created.

As for the selfie stick, researchers and archaeologists are going to have a ball in the future proclaiming the existence of a new genus of humans who evolved to have a metal protrubance sticking out of them to aid them in some as yet undetermined task, maybe for a bizarre mating ritual.

Anyway I digress, just remember this is my mind and your choice to carry on reading!

I don't have issue with the selfie, as a rule I tend not to partake and when I break my own rule I tend to keep them hidden in the deepest darkest recesses of my phone. Of course the best rules always have their own exceptions built in, mine can be overridden with copious amounts of alcohol in which case it becomes a right of passage in which I'll share images of an imaginary socialite with the world, if you come across that person I really do have very little in common with him and see him rarely!

So yes I rarely point the camera at myself and I'll typically avoid anyone else pointing it at me... now here's where the ramble takes flight, just beware that the runway isn't straight, more spaghetti junction!

On occasion I will trawl my back catalogue of what I consider to be my nicest photos, and quite often I will wish that something was different and fret about how it could still have been improved.

I am a very critical person when it comes to myself, I accept through no other alternative that I am not perfect but I do not see that as any excuse for anything I do not to be as perfect as it possibly can be.

Some years ago I suffered the worst case scenario of dropping a hard drive whilst transferring files from the PC.

Totally avoidable and utterly heartbreaking! (To those of a nervous disposition, the end of the story was over time I managed to recover about eighty percent of the library by downloading from various sites that I had uploaded to albeit lesser resolution files).

I was eager to replace some of the photos lost to time when I had opportunity to and on a trip through Loch Lomond and the Trossachs I grasped the camera knowing I could recreate some of the photos.

Well I couldn't, what had gone wrong you ask? Was I using a different lens? Was the light not right?

Possibly... but maybe the issue was myself?

And here's where I attempt to tie up all of my random threads.

I take selfies, I spend hours poring over them. editing and living with them privately for a few weeks and then re-editing with a certain feeling of disgust as I spot something glaringly hideous that I really should have noticed the first or second time round.

But of course my face doesn't appear in any of them.

My photos are a perfect reflection of myself right now.

A snapshot of who I am and a broadsheet showing a facet of my soul.

And that's the reason I was unable to recreate lost photos, I can stand in the same place with the same equipment but time can and will change the landscapes around us sometimes ravaging, sometimes sculpting into something new and beautiful. The same holds true for each and every person inhabiting this glorious planet.

Not one of my 'selfies' will ever show the full reflection of myself because in the same way that I will choose what part of the landscape I want to show. I will similarly edit myself before even going near the shutter.

Photography is an intimate relationship between photographer and landscape.

Sometimes I will respond to the landscape before me and decide that we will work best together by showing our deep dark brooding side. other vistas will inspire a carefree sunny disposition. And some will induce a cheeky smile and wink.

So while I deal with life that sometimes can be unpleasant and distracting and deal with life that requires working and playing too little I am confident that everything good and bad will be banked in to the life experiences repository and when the time is right the shutter will reveal another newly formed reflection of who I am today or tomorrow.

I am unable to recreate what was created years ago and I am unable to create what will be waiting before the lens in five years time right now because I am not that person yet. I do look forwards to the hopeful prospect of what I may create in the future.

The perfect ever changing selfie!