Skylar: Here, give me your phone so I can take a picture of you.
Eli: No. You're really bad at taking pictures of people.
Skylar: I'm VERY good at taking pictures of people.
Eli: You're not. You're good at a lot of things, but this is one of the things you're really bad at.
Skylar: How am I bad?
Eli: You do weird angles and you take the pictures when the person isn't ready and you don't notice that the picture is bad so you stop trying and you tell the person you "got some good ones" and I've been burned by you enough.
Skylar: These are all lies! Give me your phone now! I'm going to prove to you that I can do this.
Eli: Fine. Here.
Click click click click click, etc.
Eli: How did it go?
Skylar: I got some VERY good pictures. Several that look really nice. Facebook profile kind of pictures, even.
Eli: Ok. I'm willing to admit I might have been unfair to you.
Later that night, looking through the pictures of the day:
Eli: WHAT THE HELL, SKY?
Skylar: Let me see . . . hmmm. You need to work on your smizing.
Here are some other pictures (not taken by Skylar) of our travels:
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| Skylar in Munich. |
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| Munich. |
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| Munich. |
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| Just found another picture Skylar took of me. |
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| Salzburg. CLIMB. EVERY. MOUNTAAAIIIIIN. |
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| In Ljubljana. Admittedly better at smizing. |
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| Hiking Vintgar in Slovenia. |
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| Lake Bled. It's hard to see, but there's a monastery on an island out there and a castle up on the mountain to the right. |
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| Ljubljana. |
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| Hiking in Slovenia. |
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| Ljubljana's castle up on the mountain. |
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| The people back at home haven't stopped reminding me that I miss my punkin. |
~It Just Gets Stranger
Skylar's dimple though...I just can't even.
ReplyDeleteHas Skylar started watching ANTM? Because there wasn't a single grimace/cringe/flinch smile in the bunch, he smiled like a normal person in all of those shots, I'm very impressed. Also, take me on vacation with you, I'll be your official photographer and Skylar won't be allowed to...I mean won't HAVE to take photos.
ReplyDeleteAlso, totally random but the street you are standing in while Skylar is definitely trying hard to take a flattering photo of you (bless his heart), reminds me of this Van Gogh painting a little bit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_Terrace_at_Night
ReplyDeleteAgreed...
DeleteDang. He truly is a terrible photographer. But very photogenic!
ReplyDeleteHilarious. To possibly increase the ratio of good pictures to unrecognizable blurs, maybe you should give Skylar a quick lesson on tapping the screen to focus the camera. Or is that getting too technical?
ReplyDeleteAlso, do you mean to have identical hair? The OCD in me likes it. But it's hard to claim you have the best hair when you have twinsies do's. Maybe muss him up a bit before any pictures to make sure you stay on top of the hair totem pole.
I have been training my friend how to take selfies. Our first lesson was not to make weird faces the second she pulls out the camera. In the year and a half I’ve known her the photos have...gradually...improved. Now if she texts me a bad photo I tell her to take another photo from a different angle, in better lighting, without making a face, etc. She always sends over a second, better photo.
DeleteIt looks like (from the non blurry photos) you are all having a great time! I just got back from a trip to Munich, Vienna, and Salzburg, about two weeks ago, and loved it so much. We actually got a chance to sing in that cathedral in Salzburg. Thanks for sharing, Eli!
ReplyDeleteYour hair looks uhmaayyzing, even in the blurry shots. Isn't that all that matters when one is traveling through Europe?
ReplyDeleteI just watched Season 2 Episode 1 of Queer Eye and at the end when they reveal her (minor spoiler:) made over bathroom and tell her she can now spend all the time in there she needs relaxing and taking care of Tammye all I could think of was your big toe, so thanks for that!
ReplyDeleteIt’s good you thought of her. BECAUSE IT’S HER BIRTHDAY TODAY.
DeleteDoes that mean today is the anniversary of when you lost your toenail? Why would you know that Eli?
DeleteYou’re so gross but I love that about you because I love everything about you.
I cannot for the life of my understand how some people take such terrible photos. Like...do they not look at the screen? I find many people don’t look at their surroundings and frame photos at all.
ReplyDeleteI blame the term “point and shoot”. You have to let the camera focus! And you may as well look at how you’re framing the shot! Is anything in frame moving? Can you wait for it to stop or get out of frame?
I hate asking strangers to take photos of me. My friends always tell strangers to make me take photos which is almost as annoying.
But the last family who asked me to take their photo at a production of Camelot did tell me they were going to use my photos for their Christmas card, so I guess that’s flattering and I should probably be charging for my services. I do have two arts degrees...
I thought maybe you gave Skyler an unfair chance... a photo at night, with lights behind, then saw that you took an amazing picture of him at the same location. ((sigh))
ReplyDeleteI also wonder if before you decided to tell us the secret if you used to say, "Let's take a picture of us at this spot, and then another one of us standing, but not embracing for the Stranger folks...