context – Nowhere in Particular RA

Fan A-Z Challenge

D.) Which of his selfies is your favorite?

Selfies. I have a love-hate relationship with them.

that time I saw someone take a selfie during the sermon in church.

Photographs are stories. if all I see is a face making duck lips or blue steel, that is a boring story. it may look nice but it has no depth. on the other hand, if you do show something in the background but you filter the hell out of your own face in the foreground, you’ve killed the story. don’t kill the story!

Of Richard’s selfies, this is my favorite:

I like this one because he’s showing us a Berlin Station ad adorning the top of a cab, and since he’s in Berlin Station, him being in the pic with the ad is cool. layers. if you look at his clothes and the setting of the selfie, you can see that this was most likely a spur of the moment shot. he has his trusty backpack over his shoulder, very casual clothes (love the sweatshirt!), and it’s taken on a city street in traffic. he most likely touched it up a bit with filters and cropping before he posted it but he didn’t have 15 almost identical shots to choose from (I hope) because he wasn’t trying so hard to impress.

so you’re saying I should cancel the sky writer?

I like several of Richard’s selfies, like the birthday cupcake, and the soccer jersey, and the shot of the Eiffel Tower outside the back of the car window but overall, I just don’t get excited by them. show me something or someone that I’ve never seen or am not expecting.

Give me those crinkles! give me your ‘worse’ side! give me the face I might see if I spotted you picking up your dry cleaning or taking a leisurely walk in the park. that’s the you I want to see.

or just distract me with your shoes, that will work too.

I was reminded recently, the dangers of taking things out of context. Sometimes the tone of someone’s voice or their body language can give a completely different meaning to a conversation that may be lost through text translation alone; and vice versa.

This made me think of all the screen-caps and fun reaction gifs that fans make, which often have nothing to do with the film or event they originally came from.

you betcha! I’m making your favorite for dinner: tuna-salad-macaroni!

Sometimes a still screen-cap freezes a moment in time that may be hard to discern out of context, while a moving gif of the same moment may make things a bit clearer.