Last week when I drove up to visit my parents in Murwillumbah (my old home town) I decided to grab some family photos to bring back with me, so that I could scan them in for easier access and in order to preserve them [many of the color ones have already faded quite badly, even those under 20 years old].

It’s a project I’ve been meaning to do for a while, but now that I have what appears to be about 20kg of photos and albums piled up here next to me, the whole task is starting to look just a little bit daunting. I decided to start with my old school photos, but of course have already become distracted from the task at hand, and have been experimenting instead with attempting to recreate the facial expressions worn in some of these photos. It’s a surprisingly entertaining activity, if a little time-consuming.

The original images – details from group shots – of me aged 11, 12 and 16 respectively [dig that broody 16-year old]:

And here they are again, with me aged 32, 32 and 32 respectively.

Freaky, no?

The faces were photoshopped in from photos [taken just now] of me mimicking the expressions from the originals. Considering how ridiculously difficult this is to do on your own [trying to get it right without being able to see a side-by-side comparison] I think it worked pretty well!

Hmmm… I’m looking for a new hairstyle, maybe I should revisit that “Helmet-Head” haircut…

Also, looking back though family and school photos in general makes me think: I really should smile more. It’s really annoying seeing that dead expression all the time, but somewhere along the way I developed an irrational fear of smiling in front of a camera, and I’ve never really gotten over it. I just hope I still smile in Real Life…