...die, using my increasingly forlorn face in one image after another. The best part is capturing my friends, my daughter and the dogs, hers and mine. The images were taken with a point-and-shoot Lumix with a Leica lens and a very wide angle. I miss the Rolei and the Leica, black-and-white images, but this seems more representative of the times and new technologies.

It’s remarkable not to have to develop film, to make contacts, to print photographs in a darkroom. My point-and-shoot provides the sheer pleasure of instantly visible images. There’s a lot to choose from after I transfer them to the computer. I’m sure that photographers who work with color won’t appreciate my careless disregard for the finer aspects, but I don’t much care.

Some images include information about an economy in meltdown with many people out of work, many losing their homes. The inspection-of-the-body images record change as the layer of fat just under my skin disappeared. Many years ago, when my internist suggested that I take hormone replacement treatments, she mentioned that this would happen when I stopped taking them. I couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. My grandmother and father had slowly wrinkled up as they got old, but I hadn’t reckoned on that particular change.

Daily self-portraits are over for another five years. Perhaps then I‘ll take black-and-white digital images, using a tripod. I’m not fond of color, though I like the very casual quality of this set of images, possible because of the sturdy little Lumix that even weathered being dropped into a couple inches of water trapped in my raincoat pocket.