Familiar Faces

I do not have a PC.  I have a Mac.  This may seem like extraneous information for you.  Why do you care?  Indeed, you may not.  But my Mac and it’s unique abilities play a central role in my blog this week.

Apple recently released an upgrade to their iLife suite.  This software package comes with several fun and innovative utilities.  But the one I favor most is iPhoto.  Buy any Mac and you will get to try your hand at this amazing product.  Simply put, iPhoto is a means of managing your digital pictures.  However, with it’s cutting edge undeniable Apple-ish style, it is so much more.  In the past, I’ve created coffee table books as gifts, organized photos by events, devised albums around themes, and constructed websites for my kids teams, all with the help of iPhoto.

Having just installed the upgrade last night, I was playing with it’s newest features.  Actually, I never got past the first one.  This feature is called “Faces” and uses facial recognition technology to automatically locate all the photos in your library of any one individual.  Now, you have to initially help the program “learn” which person is which by naming, confirming, and rejecting a handful of photos.  But once it gets going, it is amazingly accurate at picking out other photos of a particular person.  I was Wowed!

Naturally, the first people I attempted to find amongst the 1000s of pictures in our library were my kids.  As it zoomed in on possible choices from the information I provided, I was flabbergasted to see it locate their faces over and over.  All of the pictures were from various ages, many were teeny samples from group shots, and some were blurred or darkened (due to my poor photography skills) almost beyond recognition.  Yet iPhoto identified them again and again.  How could it recognize my daughter at 2 months or 2 years as well as at 12 years?  Seeing those samples next to each other, all I could see were the differences – how much she had grown, changed, matured.  Yet, this inanimate electronic gadget could find the similarities amidst all that change.

After I recovered from the initial astonishment, I was just as eager to see who it mistook as my daughter.  There were scattered pictures of me and her sister.  I attributed these to family resemblances.  But there were other telling subjects.  As I continued to browse, a few of people were consistently mistaken as her.  Some of these impostors were even adults.  It caused me to think I might be getting a glimpse into the future.  This could be a partial view of the adult children I will have someday.

Then, another trend caught my attention.  Some of these repeated family and friends bore a likeness to my daughter other than physical.  A few had similar personalities, temperaments, dreams, and attitudes.  It’s almost as if the program could see beyond their picture to their heart.  Some comparisons made me smile; others made me sad.  Most had a message to me as a parent: some warning or encouragement.

Overall, the experience brought into clarity the mark of a life.  Each person is unique, distinct from the crowd in ways we sometimes don’t even perceive, yet still shaped and moved by things around us.  Each choice we make, each direction we turn, is imprinted on our face today and the face of our future.  Will my portrait be one I have consciously chosen or will it be the countenance of someone moved along by the currents of life.  Who and what will my life represent?

I wish I had a digital photograph of Jesus.  Would iLife mistake any of us as Him?  I am so thankful that He IS the ultimate recognition utility.  He knows me through and through.  And, in following Him, I find a more refined and pleasing picture of myself.  Who is it that you look like?