You Can't Trust the Pictures You See

My daughter, Gabrielle, is taking a video game designing class. One of her assignments was to alter a picture using Photoshop. She had to remove the tree from the original photo and insert herself in its place and make it look seamless. After she turned in her completed assignment, the teacher texted her    a gushing compliment (it started with "OMG!") and asked if she could use Gabrielle's picture as an example for all her classes.

Obviously, I'm proud of my daughter for doing such a good job. Obviously, it just reinforces my belief that you can no longer trust anything you see.

Here is the original photo with the tree:

Here is Gabrielle's completed assignment:

At first glance, you wouldn't be struck by anything out of the ordinary in this photo. There's nothing jarringly incorrect about the direction of the light source or how the shadows fall across her body or across the ground. It would be easy to assume this is a real photo if you didn't have a practiced eye for altered photos (which I don't) or if you didn't closely inspect the shadows themselves (which I did only because I knew it was doctored).

In other news, Sophia and Elannah are doubles for the same part in their high school play, which opened last night. They were both cast as Marcy in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (click here to see an example of Marcy's big solo). 

Sophia and Elannah, are, fortunately, fairly non-competitive with each other, but this is Sophia's final year of high school, so Elannah can reign supreme in musical theater next year as the only representative of the Aurora family. Meanwhile, there was a tiny bit of squabbling over who got to perform on which nights, but they worked it out without resorting to bloodshed. So, on Friday, we'll go see Sophia as Marcy, and on Saturday, we'll go see Elannah.

Curious about how my oldest daughter, Sian, is doing? She's had an interesting time since she got back from Ukraine.

She found herself a full-time job in August and then started dating a lovely young man last September, and she was over the moon because this young man had all the qualities she wanted in a future husband. There was even talk of marriage after they both finished up the next semester at BYU. Sian was completely and utterly twitterpated, totally gaga, flying high with love and beautiful dreams of a bright future. Husband and I also approved of him as a future son-in-law and future father to loads of our grandchildren.

And then he broke up with her right after Christmas, stating that he just wasn't ready for a really serious relationship yet.

Fair enough. You wouldn't want to marry someone who was going to resent the fact that he was married to you, even if he was the one who first started talking about getting married. But, understandably, it broke Sian's heart, and I spent a few weeks helping her put her shattered heart and dreams of her future into perspective before she had to head back to school. We had many long talks and many sessions where I just let her cry her heart out.

Fortunately, she's been able to deal with her grief and begin moving on with her life. She's even put herself back into the dating pool and has made a concerted effort to be social and make friends. She decided to change her major from linguistics to English teaching with an ESL minor, and, for fun, she took a music composition class, which she absolutely loves. She's doing well, and we talk all the time.

I love how as my daughters have grown, our relationships have changed into friendships. I still play the "Because I'm Your Parent and It's My Job to Teach You Important Things" card with my two younger daughters--and especially with my even younger sons--but I'm encouraged that my two oldest are good, decent people. They are independent and make good choices, but they still feel free to call me and their dad and ask for advice or just tell us about their lives. All my kids are unique, but they all know they are completely loved by their parents, and that whatever struggles they have to go through, they know we're there to support them. That thought comforts me when my brain plays all my parental failures over and over in my head.