These last few weeks in Minnesota have been “weatherly challenged” – to say the least. We have been dealt a dose of winter that I don’t recall receiving since childhood. Instead of moderate days in the low 40s or high 30s, we’ve had our share of snow and cold, mid-teens temperatures that have kept it around.

All that means is that I find myself stuck in the house alone, looking for ways to both amuse and challenge myself.

Late in the week, I was stumbling through Reddit and saw an article with a creative use of the Facebook profile. It gave me some ideas to try myself – combining the use of photography (with my newer Canon T2i camera), image editting (with some fancy software I’ve recently purchased – Pixelmator), and goofy creativity that I like to apply to my Facebook profile when I get the chance.

My idea was simple – make myself appear like I am stuck inside Facebook – ala Jeff Bridges in Tron. The key element was to use the graphic within Facebook that separates the top portion of the page with the lower portion. My first attempt kind of sucked – as it simple appeared that I was trapped underneath the top portion of the page.

I achieved this look with a simple image in front of a basement wall. A few quick edits in Pixelmator and my profile was updated to appear as it I were stuck inside the software.

I have several image editing software choices for my Macbook Pro – including the standard Adobe Photoshop. But, I tried to stick with simple and effective and did this editing using Pixelmator – a low cost, but highly-effective tool for basic image editing.

It was an interesting look, but not quite matching my initial vision. I wanted to have the image appear like I was deeply imbedded inside the software. Plus, it needed to have a little more manipulation to raise the question about how I was able to achieve the look.

Thus, my second attempt was a little more coordinated. I worked on a look that would appear as if I was hanging over the edge of the top section and trying to alter a part of the content on the Facebook page – in this case my profile picture. To achieve this, I had to do a little more extensive planning to pull it off.

My setup for capturing the base image was easily achieved with a few things I had floating around the house.

I first needed an image of me in the proper pose. This was done using the same wall as before, but I hung up a white background (the non-printed side of some wrapping paper I had) to ensure that I had the easiest backdrop to alter in software. To achieve the look of hanging over the edge, I held up a furnace filter (it was light-weight, squared-off edge, and long) along with a kitchen towel to achieve a lighter area. All of it would be edited out from the image, so it didn’t need to be perfect to work well.

Once I had the image, it was off to some simple photo editing. I first created the background for the image – with the top area of the light blue/purple band. I then created the basic text to the image – with a dashed outline to give the illusion that it was part of the Facebook software that was used to adjust a profile image.

The second attempt was a little more involved, but yielded a look that made me appear much deeper within the Facebook software and closer to my original idea.

Finally, I made the edits to my photo – including coloring all the background to either white or the light blue/purple color, resizing to fit my final image, and cropping it for insertion into the background image. A few final details – like some shadows around my hands and face – gave the image a final look.

I was happy with the final look and felt it captured a “whimsy” that I was inside the software, trying to manipulate the setting directly.

It by no means is a professional editing job, as I am a novice with the software. But, it was a fun creative activity and passed away the time on a snowy, cold Minnesota morning.