Here I thought you were a bit youthful to be in he Geezer Group.

Ok, what you want to do is put an “Avatar” in your BN profile.

And, what an avatar you’ve chosen!

Vintage Tony Auth! For you youngsters, Tony Auth is a “political cartoonist” who was published in the Daily Bruin when Fox and I were kids. Since graduating, he’s been an incredible success. As best I remember, he’s been syndicated by an East Coast newspaper. Some time ago, he won a Pulitzer Prize.

OK, Fox, here’s what I remember doing (if I’m wrong, the kids will correct me):

First, you need to take a picture of your pin.

I used my point and shoot digital camera to do my avatar. There is no need for a lot of photographic horsepower here. There are two things you will care about — lighting and focus.

Pins are a bit difficult to light because they tend to reflect light (have hot spots). These hot spots cause the glare that wipes out the detail of the pin. It’s best to not light the pin with the built in flash on the camera. That will surely cause glare. Instead, turn off that flash, and light the pin with a regular light bulb — shined through a white sheet (or a couple of layers of the sheet); you are doing this because the light bulb, too, will cause glare or shine on the metal. You can rig something up or have Mrs. Fox hold the light or sheet for you. (A powerful flashlight shot through the sheet will work, too.) The key is to look at the pin to see that it is evenly lit. If your eye sees glare, the camera will, too. (These extra precautions are not required when shooting things that don’t reflect light — like my cloth yell leaders patch. I lit it with a bare light bulb and no diffusion).

If you are lighting with a light bulb, you will want to set what’s known on the camera as “White Balance” to the thing that looks like a bulb or to the “Tungsten” setting if there is one. You are doing this because different sources of light throw a different color cast. The human brain sees white as white whether it be indoors under tungsten or fluorescent light or outdoors under sun light. Have your wife walk from inside to outside. The colors of her clothing will look the same to your eye. The camera is not that smart. So we have to tell it what light source it is seeing. If this is too much for you, shoot under the Auto White Balance setting. The camera will try to figure it out — and will get close.

I assume the pin is small. You will want to get a close up picture of it. You can either use your telephoto function to zoom in OR the better solution is to put your camera in what is known as “Macro focus mode”. This is usually a very easy thing to do, normally just pushing one button or making one menu setting change. On Canon cameras, the macro function is represented by a Tulip or flower. When you push that button, it shows up on the back screen to let you know you are in Macro Mode. Macro mode is important because it let’s you move the camera much closer to the film and allows the lens to focus at that close distance. It will let you fill the frame with the pin as opposed to whatever the pin is sitting on. And, it will show a lot of detail.

BTW — do not photograph the pin on a reflective surface and avoid white. Since you are going to try to capture as much pin as possible, you want to make sure that whatever the surface that will show is complimentary. A piece of flat black paper, like construction paper, will work well.

That’s the set up. Now all you need do is shoot. Be as steady as you can be (Geezer that you are). If you have a tripod, that will be best. We are trying to capture and preserve all of the detail in the pin. Focus and shoot.

If you are really anal, you might want “bracket” this shot. That means shoot it at one exposure that lets in less light and one that lets in more. Once more, the camera will do this for you — just look in the manual under bracketing.

But, I don’t think you will need that.

OK — Now you have your image.

Here are the steps to get it out of the camera and onto BN as an avatar:

First, you have to import it onto your computer. I’m sure you know how to do this.

Whatever software you use to get it onto the computer will also allow you to make some adjustments.

Check the color and white balance. You can tweak them ’til you get exactly what you want.

Then, crop the image. Cropping is the process of cutting off parts of the image that you don’t want to show. The avatars here are squares. So you may want to crop to a square. I can’t remember whether, when you get to the final steps below, the import function let’s you do more cropping and sizing or simply puts it in a square box.

When you have the image you want, you will want to save it.

If you are going to use it for something else, save it as a .tif. That’s a file format. The format choices are usually under the “Save” menu.

Save another copy for your Avatar — this time a “.jpeg”. You will be give a choice of “resolution” or size. If you can, choose 72dpi — that’s all you ever need for an image on the ‘net. If you don’t see that choice, you’ll probably see a scale of 1-12. Choose 6.

Save the image to your desktop or somewhere you can easily find it. (I don’t do Windoze. If you are on a Mac, save to Desktop.)

OK, now we have the image ready to go to BN.

Log onto BN. Right under the Bear, at the top of the left column is a button that says “Edit Settings”. Push it.

Your “Dashboard” comes up. Go to Edit Profile and push there.

The very top choice is Profile Image. Push “Choose File” and navigate to your pin image on your desktop. Select it.

I don’t remember what happens next, but I think it simply imports it and places it. I don’t recall if you have to do an sizing. I’d experiment for you but I don’t know where I put my Avatar image and don’t want to run the risk of losing it.

This is actually a lot simpler than it seems from reading this, but you it is the “kindest” I could be.

If you have any questions, ask away.

sjh

PS. The Auth Pin is a treasure and I can’t wait to see it here.