Picture Yourself

Our extended heatwave broke overnight on Thursday. The temperature went down to 10C/50F and the wind blowing through my window was so strong that I was getting cold under the blanket that I had dug out of the cupboard in anticipation of the cooler weather. In the middle of the night, however, I had to get up and shut the window. Crazy, eh?

The cooler temperature meant that we didn't have to rush to get our morning walk in early, and when we did go out, we took a new-to-us route that would be too sunny and hot on many days. After driving downtown (it's not far) and parking at the Wool Shoppe, we walked over to Tim Hortons and ordered coffees to go.

The entrance at Tims has red trim, and with red being Sues' theme for the week, she grabbed this shot. Too bad that I wasn't wearing red on this day. But I like the perspective.

Having procured our drinks, we headed toward The Junction recreational area, but we stopped on the way to photograph red fire trucks at the police and fire station.

We continued on the the park, found a shady bench, and watched the children playing on a red structure. You shall see that shortly, but I withhold the photo momentarily.

As we were sitting there enjoying a beautiful day with the children also playing happily, Sue got a message from her sister, Heather, the contents of which are not important. She decided to send a a selfie photo of our pleasant situation to Heather, which she did.

I, however, noticed that Sue switched out of Messenger into her camera app, to take the photo, and then switched back to Messenger to send it. I told her she could save a step by accessing the phone through Messenger itself.

What I didn't know is that you can do a picture-in-picture that way. I discovered this accidentally. Feel free to ask, “What’s with the long face, AC?” Answer: I’m not sad, it’s camera distortion. 

And there is the aforementioned red play structure.

Oddly, we can only do this effect with in Messenger and not directly from the Apple camera app. It doesn't quite make sense to me because Messenger, obviously, uses the Apple phone.

So there we are. You can take a selfie+scene in the Messenger app. To do so, activate the comment box, click the camera icon at the side, and just select the DUAL option when the app opens up. Once you are done with Messenger, be sure to also save it to your phone.

Go ahead. Try it, and post it. And may your face not be distorted in the process.