Story behind my photo...

A few days ago I was tagged in an article where they talked about people's profile pictures and biography on read.cash and today I want to explain about the origin of my profile picture and biography.

Wednesday, February 23rd

Many people on read.cash use a personal photo, a photo of their family, a photo of their pet or an image they have downloaded from the Internet that they like. This topic was started talking by my friend @Unity and it is the truth, it is normal, also in our social networks like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram or Twitter, we use a photo that identifies us or a photo that we like, maybe this image has to do with us or not.

I remember that for me one of the main social networks I used was Messenger and there you could put a picture of yourself, a downloaded picture or a default picture from Messenger, since there they also gave you different options of images to put like a horse, a duck, a landscape, a cat, etc. I remember that I would put butterflies or pictures of me and my father would put one of the default images that came with the application, I remember that he would put the image of two horses. The same thing happens with Hotmail or Gmail, we use a picture that identifies us or simply a picture that we like.

This type of image represents us, even if we don't want it to, but this is the visual way for other users to identify us.

Maybe my father likes horses and that's why he left that image, maybe he didn't want to put a real picture of him. But maybe we don't really want to say who we are and we put any image, whether we like it or not.

It is common to put images that we like or just not pay much attention to the image we use, but as my friend Unity says, a profile picture for a blogger is important, since it allows others, ie readers, to identify who we are. Let's imagine we are reading a book, in many books there is a picture of the author on the left side of the first page with his biography and some books, or on the last page, this allows us to get an idea of what the author is like, but of course this does not happen in every book, but with the help of the Internet, we can look for an image of the author and we can see if he is male, female, blond, dark, etc. and we begin to have a visual image of the writer.

I remember that before my friend Unity I identified him by the image of his previous profile, now that he has changed his profile, I can't distinguish his image, now I distinguish him by his user name. The profile picture of my sponsors are their pictures, the same as their sponsor image, except in my sponsor Gertu, but this image I identify it very well, this image are some pink flowers and has his user name, unlike my father's profile picture that still has the default image of read.cash, so I can't distinguish him by his image, but by his user name.

I repeat once again, the profile picture for a blogger is important because it is the visual way to identify the writer. As humans, the visuals or images have always been a bit more important than the name or the writings.

What do I mean by this?

In my case, I distinguish actors a lot and I know in which movies they have acted, but I don't know the name of the actor, I only know who he is because I have seen him several times, the same happens with the creators of a movie, maybe we don't know who he is, but if we have seen many of his movies and we have seen many times his name, we can identify which movies he has made. Maybe we like an artist and we know their stage name, but we don't remember the name of their songs.

Where does this visual ability come from?

We have developed this visual ability over the years. Our ancestors used visual identification a lot, detailing all the people in their tribe to know who is friend and who is foe based on their features.

Over the years we continue to use this visual ability to distinguish other people and remember their features, to know if a person's features are from our country or from another country. As a Latin American, for us the most characteristic features to distinguish are from Asian people and it is normal, they are the people we see more different from us and maybe we can not distinguish between two Asian people or maybe yes, but among them if they can distinguish perfectly because they have lived with these characteristics in their environment and can distinguish. Perhaps for them it is difficult to distinguish a Russian from a Spaniard, because they consider that the features of these people are similar, since their visual environment is different and they are used to distinguish people similar to them, the same happens with us.

With this I mean that the visual part, the features of someone we are meeting are very important for us to distinguish how the other person is, with respect to the profile pictures, with them we can identify or know a little of how the person is, of course, there are also many people who put happy photos with their couple and maybe they are not happy, so we can not know everything about the person, maybe with the photo what we think we know is wrong, but when it comes to a blogger should be something, I think, that identifies them as best as possible.

As I said before, I recognize my sponsors because they come out with a photo that I have already identified very well and not with the default photo of read.cash, Rebeysa comes out with a photo of her both in the sponsorship image and in her profile picture, Gertu has a photo of her in her profile and one of pink flowers with her user in her sponsorship, Coquicoin has a photo of her I think in a cafe.

There are other users like TengoLoTodo has pictures of him, Lykelyka has a picture of her with a camera, daring-celt has a picture of a wolf, RosheiGanda has a picture of one piece, an anime I like a lot. I have also seen a person whose user I don't remember, but I know he has a picture of a white cat with glasses, so everywhere I see his sponsorship I know who he is, but I don't know his user, so the picture of a blogger is as important as his user name and his biography describes a little bit about what he likes, so with that you can know what he writes about and if you will like his writings or not.

History of my photo

My profile picture is a real picture of me. At that time I was starting with illustration, but I was also looking for students, the pandemic had already started, so the list of students was decreasing, the work in the academy collapsed completely, the kids didn't want to see virtual classes because they were already used to see face to face classes, so they didn't feel comfortable, and I understand them, I didn't feel comfortable to give classes over the phone either.

So little by little the students started to decrease, they started to leave the academy because they were not going to pay for online classes, and the private students stopped paying us for the same reason, they didn't want online classes, but it was too risky to give them face-to-face classes, so we ran out of students...

My profile picture was created for publicity, in order to get more private students who wanted to see online classes. First I took some pictures of Luis to create the publicity for the online classical guitar lessons. Then Luis took some pictures of me.

Of all the pictures Luis took of me, I liked this one even though it shows a lot of light, but I decided to draw myself as a practice of what I was learning in illustration, I was just starting, it was one of my first drawings, so I liked it a lot and I decided to use it for publicity and make myself known, even though it's me, it doesn't really show who I am and I liked that.

At that time I had just had my hair cut and it had turned into an afro, which I like. Yes, I cut my hair by myself, but it doesn't always look like an afro, so it was one of the few times that it looked like that.

So... Why do I use a drawing instead of the original photo?

Well, as I said before, the picture has too much light and I feel it doesn't show up well. I love the way my hair looks in that image, but the same thing, it has a lot of light, so I decided to make it as a drawing and it turned out well, I liked it. I made a different image from the same photo. So I have two options, either I use an image with a lot of light or I use a drawing that I created by myself which I liked.

Besides, the image combines three things that I like:

• My afro at that moment

• It shows that I am a musician

• It was something I created with the skills I had at the time about illustration.

This image I have used it in different social networks like Whatsapp, Facebook, Telegram, Instagram and now on read.cash, so I feel it represents me, it represents who I am and what I like, even though it doesn't show my face, you can notice a little bit the silhouette of my face, my hair and the instrument Cuatro Venezolano. So it's me without showing completely who I am...

My biography has been hard to write because I have done a lot of things these last years, especially in the pandemic, so I didn't know what to write, because I have worked as a baker, in bakery, making cement pots, drawing, giving music lessons, giving math lessons, recording songs with Luis, I have taken pictures, I have made videos of music lessons and now I write in read.cash. So I didn't know what to write about me, so I spent many days writing what I thought was most acceptable and not too long, even though it is varied it was the best I could write that I felt comfortable with and described a little about me in so few and varied words.

Thanks friend for making it to the end of my article, I hope you liked it. Now that you know the story of my profile picture, I want to know more things about you

Does your read.cash photo have a story?

Do you think a blogger's profile picture is important or is it unnecessary?

You can comment what you think without any problem, you can also give like if you liked this article and thanks once again for your visit and for reading my article.

You can follow my wonderful sponsors and read their articles, you can also become my sponsor, I know I have lost a lot of sponsors because I have been very inactive this year, a lot of negative things have happened in my life that I am still recovering from, but a lot of positive things have also happened so I will keep going here at read.cash every chance I get.

See you in the next article!  

All content is original

The photos were taken by Luis, I have permission to use it.

The drawing was made by me

Greetings from Venezuela