Starting 2015 52Frames With a Self-Portrait and the Most "Likes" Ever

I've been part of the weekly photography group 52Frames for over a year now, without (bli eyin haraa-not to tempt the "evil eye") missing a week. A lot of the other members have very impressive photo equipment. All I have is a very simple, relatively inexpensive Canon IXUS 145 and my nothing to brag about smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy 2. For me "photo editing" is done on the simple free computer program,  IrfanView. I rarely do more than cropping the photo a bit. I have played with the colors a couple of times.

Generally, I think I'm lucky to have my "likes" reach double digits, but this week's self-portrait somehow got people excited. We were asked to have it tell some sort of story, too. So I held my high school yearbook photo. Here it is, and afterwards I'll show some of the rejects and how I produced that shot:

Self to Self PortraitThose were the days...I hope I haven't changed all that much, but as you can see, much has changed in the almost, but not yet, half a century since I posed for my high school yearbook picture.I used the camera's timer, Canon IXUS 145, turned off the flash.

Pre-cropping:

The "studio"

At first I posed also with a photo of my great-grandmother, but with the exception of this one, which has one upside down, the flash-actually the livingroom light kept glaring on the glass.

The "rejects"