Not-So-Recent Photo

[TromboneAl]

Sorry, all of those are incorrect (answers below). I had trouble too. It will help if you see what I call her "chipmunk smile." You can see it here in this reunion photo with the same kids as in the middle photo above!







Here are the answers:
First photo: Back row, 2nd from right
Second photo: Third row from the front, second from the right
Third photo: Front row, leftmost

[Meadbh]

That was fun! I actually did choose correctly in the third photo. I love looking at old photos. Thanks T-Al!

[FinanceDude]

The only thing I have to add is the Al married WAY UP!!!

[ERD50]

This is fascinating to me, as I have some form of 'face blindness'. But I got all three correct (yes, you'll need to trust me on that), and I had a pretty good confidence factor, and I only glanced back at the first pic once, and the other pics of Lena I recall were not close ups, so it's not like I have a detailed mental picture of her. I thought that in the youngest, the middle row far left girl was a possibility though.

But like omni, if I see someone outside of where I would normally see them - 9/10 they are just a face in the crowd to me, I'll walk right past them. If they say 'Hi!", I might still have a really hard time placing them.

I have literally spent an evening with dinner and engaged in talk afterwards with two other couples, and three days later we meet one of them while we are shopping and are chatting, and as we break up I have to ask DW "Who was that?", she looks at me like I'm from outer-space (not uncommon), and says "Uhh, we had dinner at their house Friday, you were there...". Then it actually comes back to me kind of slowly, sometimes in a flash. It is embarrassing. OTOH, sometimes the face of an attractive woman I see for ten seconds is burned in my memory, I might even remember her name

edi/add: if I see the couple together - that will usually trigger my memory, but seeing just one - it's a crap shoot

My father was one who would recognize a casual acquaintance he hadn't seen in 15 years, just walking down the street. My Mom admitted she is more like me though.

I'll mention to DW that this or that actress looks like another, and she will insist they don't look anything alike. But I mean, no not really alike, but they share some features that make them similar, and she doesn't get it. Someone mentioned Hillary Swank and Lena, I can kind of see that, but you have to imagine a 'softer' Swank - Swank has kind of 'hard' edges to her face, which makes her rather difficult to pin down. I guess I'm not alone, recall the 'Office' episode - hot or not?

-ERD50

[Bestwifeever]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TromboneAl Sorry, all of those are incorrect....

I actually knew I wouldn't get it right! So cool that her reunion was so well attended and I could track many of Lena's classmates in the earlier photos.

But I especially loved the dog who attended the reunion!

[Dreamer]

I saw the 60 minutes piece and I am bad at recognizing people, but nowhere near to these poor people. I felt so bad for the small boy, who could not recognize his mother.

Needless to say, I did not correctly identify Lena in any of the photos.

[TromboneAl]

I can never recognize Madonna. I don't know what it is about her.

[Alan]

DW is often amazed at how good I am recognizing folks, and even remembering their names much of the time, but it only works with folks I've seen over the past few years. I am hopeless at matching children's photos with their adult images.

[omni550]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ERD50 This is fascinating to me, as I have some form of 'face blindness'. But I got all three correct (yes, you'll need to trust me on that), and I had a pretty good confidence factor, and I only glanced back at the first pic once, and the other pics of Lena I recall were not close ups, so it's not like I have a detailed mental picture of her. I thought that in the youngest, the middle row far left girl was a possibility though. But like omni, if I see someone outside of where I would normally see them - 9/10 they are just a face in the crowd to me, I'll walk right past them. If they say 'Hi!", I might still have a really hard time placing them. I have literally spent an evening with dinner and engaged in talk afterwards with two other couples, and three days later we meet one of them while we are shopping and are chatting, and as we break up I have to ask DW "Who was that?", she looks at me like I'm from outer-space (not uncommon), and says "Uhh, we had dinner at their house Friday, you were there...". Then it actually comes back to me kind of slowly, sometimes in a flash. It is embarrassing. OTOH, sometimes the face of an attractive woman I see for ten seconds is burned in my memory, I might even remember her name edi/add: if I see the couple together - that will usually trigger my memory, but seeing just one - it's a crap shoot My father was one who would recognize a casual acquaintance he hadn't seen in 15 years, just walking down the street. My Mom admitted she is more like me though. I'll mention to DW that this or that actress looks like another, and she will insist they don't look anything alike. But I mean, no not really alike, but they share some features that make them similar, and she doesn't get it. Someone mentioned Hillary Swank and Lena, I can kind of see that, but you have to imagine a 'softer' Swank - Swank has kind of 'hard' edges to her face, which makes her rather difficult to pin down. I guess I'm not alone, recall the 'Office' episode - hot or not? -ERD50

ERD...OMG, I would say something to my ex-SO, like,"So-and-so looks like actress x"...and he'd look at me like I was crazy.

And, yes, I have that sort of a memory that attaches a person to the environment I've know them in...and if I see them elsewhere, I'm usually doomed. For example, I've run into my neighbor (he lives 2 houses away, we're not close, but I see him in the 'hood) at the grocery store, he says "Hi, omni" and I look at him blankly and have to ask him who he is. Embarassing.

I'm also notoriously bad at remembering names.

omni

[Walt34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack Though (my) DW looks like a "mature" woman to others, when I look at her I still see the 23 yo I married.

I say that to DW all the time too, although she remains unconvinced. But if I do a little (gentle) retouching in Photoshop she doesn't mind, and she's my harshest portrait critic.

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack Though (my) DW looks like a "mature" woman to others, when I look at her I still see the 23 yo I married. Just something spouses do naturally I guess...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Walt34 I say that to DW all the time too, although she remains unconvinced.

Same here.

Not only that, but all my memories of my high-school & college classmates are hard-coded the way they looked in their teens & 20s... '70s hairstyles and '80s clothing and all.

When you're in the military, you and your shipmates get around. You're quite accustomed to bumping into people on travel or at a new duty station, even if you haven't seen them in a decade. The problem is that I keep seeing people who I think I recognize, only to realize that I'm actually seeing a 20-something person who looks a lot like a shipmate who's now in their 50s.

One day our college daughter was waxing enthusiastically about her future college reunions. I sat her down with copies of my own high-school & college yearbooks and had her pick through photos of my friends. (Or people who had written interesting things by their portraits that seemed poignant & funny 30+ years ago, but that I now had to explain to my daughter through the hindsight of sex/drugs/rock&roll.) Then we looked those people up on Facebook & Linkedin until we found their "now" photos.

She was horrified that I know so many fat bald old guys. Yet to me those old photos are more "real" than their current incarnations.

Facebook & Linkedin have ruined any cherished illusions I ever had about attending a reunion. I might have ruined her illusions, too...

[harley]

I'm horrible at remembering faces too, to the extent that I have to start all over each time at the annual HOA Christmas party. It's pretty embarrassing, so I always show up late so people will have time to get drunk enough to not care.

DW, on the other hand, is amazing. Not only can she recognise people she hasn't seen since high school or later, she can recognise as adults the kids she used to teach in pre-school day care. I can't even imagine it. I can't even recognise myself from those ages. And I've never once been able to see it when someone says a baby looks like someone or other.

[Nemo2]

Playing around with old pics and our new scanner, (like a kid at Christmas), I came across this one, circa 1966, taken on the RHMS Patris, (no, I'm not the one trying to sell the postcard ).

We were heading from Australia to Greece, and the vast majority of passengers were Greek born, or of Greek extraction - because of my beard I was recruited to play the role of King Neptune, (the only other eligible individual, IIRC, was an Orthodox Greek priest.....and I don't believe he was interested in the 'job').

For those not familiar with 'Crossing The Line (Equator)' ceremonies, another group of passengers are recruited to act as 'slaves/prisoners'......they are 'charged' with ridiculous 'crimes', slathered with concoctions of whipped cream, (and other dessert leftovers), and then thrown into the pool.

Finally, (and since I'd crossed the Equator before, I was aware of this......the girl playing Queen Neptune wasn't), the King & Queen are grabbed and subjected to the same treatment.

But......rather ungallantly, at the last second, I hopped over the rail, down the 'ladders', and escaped, leaving her to her fate.

[Donzo]

I am the one 2nd from the left in the brown cordies. !978, we were in San Salvador Bahamas "studying" marine biology 3rd quarter college sophmore year. Man, I thought I would be young forever! What great times.

[rescueme]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords She was horrified that I know so many fat bald old guys.

Heck, it could be worse.

DW is married to one ...

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nemo2 For those not familiar with 'Crossing The Line (Equator)' ceremonies, another group of passengers are recruited to act as 'slaves/prisoners'......they are 'charged' with ridiculous 'crimes', slathered with concoctions of whipped cream, (and other dessert leftovers), and then thrown into the pool.

Luckily, I was just a little kid my first time, so all they made me do was eat cold spaghetti blindfolded (and they told me it was worms). I haven't found any photos of that event yet, but here's a photo taken in Egypt in 1954 (the previous year) that shows my mother, me, and the camel driver. We were on our way to Giza, which at the time was only accessible by a long trek via camel. The expression on my 5-year-old face shows exactly what I thought of international travel at the time, and my opinion now is about the same.

BTW, like you I just got a new scanner (on Thursday), and have been scanning in photos during all of my free time since. I am up to about 2000 by now. It could be more, but it takes me about 4x as long to figure out the who/when/where and organize the photos, as it does to scan them. This is one of the ones I scanned in last night.

[Nemo2]

W2R, you probably remember the Port Said, (or perhaps Port Suez), 'bumboats' that used to come alongside the ships, (throw up a weighted line which was then tied to the deck rail), and hoist up souvenir trinkets in a basket?

2,000 pics, wow! Apart from a few shots, here and there, I didn't really start taking many photos until the 1980s......now have a bunch of slides that can be laboriously converted to digital.......the scanner is SO much easier.

[TromboneAl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by W2R BTW, like you I just got a new scanner (on Thursday), and have been scanning in photos during all of my free time since. I am up to about 2000 by now. It could be more, but it takes me about 4x as long to figure out the who/when/where and organize the photos, as it does to scan them. This is one of the ones I scanned in last night.

For the photos you like best, note that you can improve them significantly. For this one, I increased the contrast, ran a sharpening filter, and a clarify (whatever that is) in Paintshop Pro:

Before:


After:

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nemo2 W2R, you probably remember the Port Said, (or perhaps Port Suez), 'bumboats' that used to come alongside the ships, (throw up a weighted line which was then tied to the deck rail), and hoist up souvenir trinkets in a basket? 2,000 pics, wow! Apart from a few shots, here and there, I didn't really start taking many photos until the 1980s......now have a bunch of slides that can be laboriously converted to digital.......the scanner is SO much easier.

I am just beginning to make progress, too, since I have many thousand photos I guess. But finally the "done" box is bigger than the "not done" box. Many of the photos are duplicates - - remember the days when we thought that getting two copies when photos were developed, was a good thing? Not so, now. I seem to have become the repository for historical family photos dating back to the early 19th century, and everything from then until now. Many of the photos were taken by me at the age shown in the photo (with my Brownie camera) on up, or by my brothers or parents, so I am puzzling over what on earth they are, where they are, and who the people are in them.

At age 5 my memories of Egypt are mainly my horror at the dreadful poverty as we walked (and walked and walked and walked) around through the worst and scariest parts of Cairo. I especially remember a little girl my age who was starving (or so I gathered), and wanting to give her a dime, all the money I had. My parents cut me off at the pass on that one since we probably would have been mobbed had I done it.

We traveled from the US via the QE1, but then proceeded by land and air from there. We eventually flew from Israel through Cyprus to Egypt, because traveling from Israel directly to Egypt was not allowed due to mideast war/tensions.

I'm not sure how my father pulled that one off in Cyprus. I was only 5.

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TromboneAl For the photos you like best, note that you can improve them significantly. For this one, I increased the contrast, ran a sharpening filter, and a clarify (whatever that is) in Paintshop Pro:

Thanks, Al. This is NOT one that I like best. It is simply cropped out of a much bigger photo, so that the forum could see my expression more easily. So far I have been devoting only about 10-20 seconds to each photo.... maybe 2 seconds to scan it in, plus about 4 times that much to figure out who/what/where, rename it, delete if a duplicate, and organize. I have thousands and thousands to scan. So, obviously I haven't had anywhere near the time to process any/all of them yet, and probably never will. Thanks for doing it for me on this one, though.

I like Paintshop Pro too, and that is what I used to crop it. I have an old version that I can install on as many computers as I like, from back in the days when buying software meant that one really owns it. It does everything that I need for my photos.