One Hour Photo

The other day, my mother was reading a theater review and was puzzled by something. The reviewer referred to the fact that he liked it when a certain character onstage took an “iPad selfie.”

Her question, “What is he talking about?”

With photo apps and advances in digital photography coming faster than prints from an old-school Fotomat, we thought we would have our first Tutorial Tuesday be a glossary of a few terms that are relatively new, but are also causing quite the flash on Social Media platforms.

Selfie: (sell-fee) Pretty much what the name implies, it’s a photo of yourself that you take. The quality of selfies has increased dramatically with the reversible camera function on iPhones 4 and 5 and most Android devices. (It’s a function of the camera that allows you to see what you are capturing.)

 

A well executed selfie of our Traffic Coordinator, Stuart Webb
A well executed selfie of our Traffic Coordinator, Stuart Webb.

Photo-Bomb:  (foto-bahm) While it sounds quite violent, it’s really pretty harmless, as long as your “victims” are not uptight about it. Simply put, when you photo-bomb someone, you jump in on the subject of their photo. (Photo-bombs can be done on purpose or on accident.)

 

Stuart photo-bombed Katrina’s award ceremony, jealous that he didn’t win.

In fact, humans don’t have a monopoly on photo-bombing:

 

Paw Nation captured one of the best examples of canine-camera-interuptus ever.
Paw Nation captured one of the best examples of canine-camera-interuptus ever.

Avatar: (a-vuh-tar) Besides being an overpriced James Cameron film that I didn’t really care for (admit it, those “people” looked freaky as hell,) an avatar is a graphic representation of yourself online. Avatars have other names that are site-specific (ie your Facebook profile pic is in the general category of avatar,) but they are especially popular in online-gaming communities.

 

This is my actual Facebook profile pic, which falls into the broad category of “avatar.” Don’t make me sorry I shared this. While I’m an avid animal lover, I DO NOT want to see pics of your cats.

So that wraps up the first Tuesday Tutorial, we hope it gave you some useful information (and an impromptu movie review.)

Join us next Tuesday for “Five Facebook Errors That You Need to Stop Making.”

I’ll give you one for free. Error number one: not having a Facebook account.

Come on, without one, how do you know how your life stacks up against the kid you despised in high school? (For example, a lot of my former nemeses have crappy jobs they despise. It’s fabulous…)

Say cheese,

Scott