Faces

The new iPhoto '09 available for mac has an interesting feature called "Faces". After you begin to name a few faces iPhoto will begin to recognize the face in the other photos in your library. The program will group them together and you click on them to confirm that the person is who the computer thinks they are. I just went through and did all the pictures for myself, and the computer was extremely accurate. I was clicking away confirming all the pictures of me in my iPhoto so fast I kind of went into a daze. All the different "Travis" faces flashed before my eyes: different haircuts, different lengths of facial hair, tan, pasty, sunglasses, hats....... I was convinced iPhoto had figured me out, until I stopped over a picture toward the end. My mouse pointer froze over the face.

It was a picture of Abbey and I on our wedding day, surrounded by my extended family. What made me stop was that the program did not put the little "Travis" box around my face... it was centered on someone else in the group on the right side of the picture under the flowers. My late grandfather Joseph Klein. I sat there for a moment looking at his face, remembering him, his hands, the way he would whistle while doing yard-work or cooking on the grill. 

I thought about how people live on through their children and grandchildren, passing on genetic information to the next generation. Part of him is part of me, and this computer program recognized it, whatever it was.

I clicked confirm.