Friday Q&A: Photographs of People Over 50 Doing Yoga

Bob Kubik, Age 79

Q: I sent my photo in to your photo contest, and noticed that it wasn’t included in your photo gallery. Is that because you rejected my photo? And now I’ve noticed the two photo galleries are no longer even on your site. What’s up with that? Where did all the photos go and what are you doing with them?

A: First off, I’d like to say, thank you so much, everyone, for sending and continuing to send such wonderful photos! If you’re on Facebook and are following our Yoga for Healthy Aging Facebook page, you’ll know that we’ve been sharing these photos five days a week as our Photo of the Day, and these photos are extremely popular. The photo of Bob Kubik above, for example, was shared over 200 times, and got over 20,000 views (can’t remember the exact numbers). I’m really excited that we’ve been able to use social media to spread images of older people doing yoga, in both simple and challenging poses, to counteract the media trend of only portraying thin, young, white women. Here’s another popular one:

Gel Brown, Age 76

And to make sure you all know that older women can do fancy arm balances, too, here's Leslie Greinstein doing the same pose as Bob Kubik above:

Leslie Greinstein, age 62

But what I didn’t foresee is how difficult it would be to maintain the photo galleries. The blog format isn’t really set up well to have pages that contain hundreds of photographs, so very quickly, I became overwhelmed and stopped updating them.

So, in answer to your first question: If I rejected your photo, I sent you a message explaining why. If I did not reply, that’s because I liked the photo and will be using it somewhere, some day—maybe just on our Facebook page or maybe one day in one of our posts. 

In answer to your second question: I realized recently that the galleries were hopelessly out of date and that updating them would be very time consuming (I probably would need to have several pages, organized alphabetically or something). So I decided it would be best for me to just take them down. I hope you’re not too disappointed about this. (Right now, it is me and only me who does all the work of editing, formatting, indexing, finding pictures for, etc. all the posts on our blog.)

Where did the photos go? Well, they’re all still on my computer, organized nicely, so I can look through them whenever I need a photo of an older person doing yoga. And what I’m doing with them is posting them on Facebook, five days a week, and using them to illustrate certain posts on our blog when I find one that is appropriate. 

Now this is going to sound kind of crazy after I said that I was overwhelmed with dealing with the photos, but I actually would love people to send me more photos (see Photo Contest: Open for All People Over 50 for information about what I’m looking for). That’s because I’m starting to run low on fresh photos for the Facebook Photo of the Day feature, and because that feature is so popular, I’d like to keep offering new photos for as long as I can. 

Bottom Line: Even though we no longer have photo galleries, I’d love for you to continue to send me photos for me to share on Facebook and to use in blog posts. I'd especially like to have more photographs of people of color, like this beautiful one of De Jur, as I have received only a few of those. 

De Jur, Age 57

Just be sure to read the instructions at Photo Contest: Open for All People Over 50 so you can be sure your photo meets our requirements.

—Nina

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook ° Join this site with Google Friend Connect

Read More

Photo Contest: Open for All People Over 50!

by Nina

Baxter Bell, Age 54, by Melina Meza

The YFHA photo contest (see Photo Contest!) is now open to men as well as women. To be eligible, your photo must meet the following specifications:

1. Portray a woman, a man, or people over 50 doing a yoga pose (of any level of difficulty), meditating, or practicing a mudra. No restorative poses or chair yoga at this time. Any body type or race (diversity is encouraged!). 
2. Be a digital photograph (or scan) in a reasonably high resolution and in focus.
3. Have a reasonably attractive physical surrounding (either outside or inside). So no messy rooms, even if we sometimes do yoga in messy rooms. Pets are allowed (though I have a limit on how many cats I can take). Urban environments are as good as nature shots.
4. If the photo is a single person doing a yoga pose, the alignment must be one that I consider to be healthy. And no body parts can be cropped off, unless in an artistic fashion.
5. Be aesthetically pleasing.
6. You must either be in the photo or have taken the photo (that way, I can have your official permission to use it).

Here are some examples of winning photos submitted to me: 

Perry Chattler, Age 60

Vincent, Age 51, Copyright by Sara Bennet 2013

Richard Rosen, Age 67, by Melina Meza

This is a rolling contest  and there is no deadline. I'll keep taking and using photos as long as I'm blogging. So take your time and submit a quality photograph rather than just sending in whatever snaps you have on your phone. I'm going to use the same standards for photos of men that I use for photos of women. Typical reasons a photo is rejected include:

• Photo is too small (resolution is too low), so it will be blurry on the blog.
• Photo is out of focus, partly out of focus, and/or lighting is poor, so person is in shadow or whole photo is too dark.
• Figure is too small within the background, (you will look like an ant on the blog, even though, yes, that mountain is really pretty).
• A body part or parts is awkwardly cropped off (where are your feet and/or fingertips?), or your face isn't showing in a pose when it normally would (the pose was taken from an odd angle or you are wearing a hat and sunglasses).
• The facial expression seems unhappy, uncomfortable, or pained.
• The environment is messy (props, plastic water bottles, bits and pieces of other students in the classroom).
• Alignment of the pose looks unhealthy in my opinion, for example, the head and neck are not in line with the spine.
• The photo doesn't feel inspiring or uplifting to me. (Hey, if we want to get positive images of older people doing yoga out there, the images need to feel positive.)

Although I don't by any means require professional photos, typically a quick snapshot done with your phone in a classroom or out on a hike—unless it is really special—isn't going to make the grade. Trust me, I've seen a lot of them at this point. So if you want your images to be seriously considered, take some time in creating them and take multiple shots of a single pose to get a good one. Arrange the setting and move that plastic water bottle somewhere else. Have someone look at your alignment and give you some cues. Take off your hat and sunglasses and smile. Or, at least relax your face.

To submit your photos, you can either email them to me (see Contact Us) or submit via our Yoga for Healthy Aging Facebook Page. There is no deadline because you will not be competing against each other. Multiple submissions allowed. All photos that meet the specifications will be winners!

The prizes? I will use these photos in our posts, with your name, age, and a web address, if desired. I hope there will be a huge number of prizes.

And you should feel free to “borrow” these photographs and give them even more exposure, as long as you give appropriate credits.

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook ° Join this site with Google Friend Connect

Read More

New Photo Galleries

by Nina

Bhavani Cooper, Age 56
barbara-e-cooper.healthcoach1.integrativenutrition.com

Our first photo contest (see Photo Contest and Friday Q&A: Why Only Women in Your Photo Contest?) has turned out to be a huge success. I have to say, I’m just thrilled. It’s taking me some time to go through all the photos submitted so far, but there are going to be a large number of prize-winning photos for sure!

So I’ve decided to create some new pages on the blog that are photo galleries of the prize-winning photos, one for women and one for men (that second photo contest is coming soon).

See Photo Gallery: Women Over 50 and Photo Gallery: Men Over 50.

The only reason I’m creating two separate pages for the genders is that I’m concerned that having too many photographs on a single page might cause technical problems on the blog. Later on, I may divide them up in some other way. Actually if you have suggestions for a better way of splitting them up, let me know.

Richard Rosen, Age 67, photographed by Melina Meza
richardrosenyoga.com

So far, I’ve only put up a few photos on these pages, but you can keep checking back. Basically, if your photo or photos “win,” you’ll eventually be in the gallery. If not, you’ll receive an email or Facebook reply from me explaining why I’ve rejected your photo. 

Reasons for rejection typically include:

• Photo is out of focus, partly out of focus, or too small (low resolution)
• Background is cluttered or unattractive
• The lighting is poor
• There is a very tiny image of you in a big landscape (that won't work on the blog)
• Body parts are cropped off (feet not showing, fingertips not in the frame, etc.)
• Face is shaded and dark, while background is bright (wearing hats definitely causes this problem as does strong back lighting) or your face doesn’t show at all (exceptions will be made for certain poses)
• Alignment of the pose looks unhealthy in my opinion, for example, the head and neck are not in line with the spine

Although I don’t by any means require professional photos, typically a quick snapshot done with your phone, unless it is really special, is not going to make the grade. So if you want your images to be seriously considered, take some time in creating them. Arrange the setting and move that plastic water bottle somewhere else. Have someone look at your alignment and give you some cues. Take multiple shots to get one good one. Take off your hat and sunglasses. Smile. Like these:

Judith Sims-Barlow, Age 72

Nancy LaNasa, Age 60

And if I reject your photo, you can always try again with a different photo. There are no deadlines for these contests.

But if you are interested in having your photo taken by our staff photographer, yoga teacher Melina Meza, she is available for hire. You can see her photographs of yoga practitioners on Flickr. To contact her, to the Contact page on her web site melinameza.com for her email information.

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook ° Join this site with Google Friend Connect

Read More

Friday Q&A: Why Only Women in Your Photo Contest?

Joy Sassoon, Age 60
by Tanya Constantine

Q: Why aren't you including men in your photo contest?

A: The simple answer is that if you scan through the posts on our blog, you will see a preponderance of photos of a white man in his 50s (Baxter Bell). So, to start, I wanted to get a bit more diversity on the blog and I decided to start with women (of all colors and body types). 

Karen Moore by Melina Meza

Secondly, older women in the yoga world—and in society in general—tend to get overlooked, much more than older men. There are lots of photographs out there of older yoga male teachers, and not so many of the females. In general, older women often comment that they feel "invisible," and older men appear as much as 10 times more frequently than older women in media (see The Case of the Disappearing Women Over 40: Anti-Aging and Symbolic Annihilation). Because I'm in the position to do something about that (rather than just ranting about it), I decided it was time to do my bit. And guess what? I posted the photo above of Joy Sassoon on our Facebook page, and it is literally going viral. I think that speaks to the hunger out there for more representation of this group.

However, there have been some complaints about lack of equality in this contest, so because I've received an outpouring of photographs of older woman doing yoga, I've decided that after I'm able to sort through all those photos and have posted a significant number of them, I will open the contest to men. Stay tuned!

Vincent, Age 51
Copyright by Sara Bennett 2013

—Nina

P.S. I received the following comment on Tuesday's post: 

"Although I love the women models I do not like the listing of their ages. If you added a caption with the age of all your models, it would be more balanced. Noting only the ages of women, and only older women, is feeding the 'anti aging' paradigm we would like to avoid."

This comment confused me. I thought women proudly stating their age was a good thing, as we are often taught to lie about our ages or be ashamed of being older. What do you think? Should I include the ages or not? (Of course, if I continue including the women's ages, I would also include the ages of men whose photos I post after that contest begins. I won't be posting Baxter's age on every single photo of Baxter, however, because I considered the photos of people demonstrating our poses to be in a different category.)

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook ° Join this site with Google Friend Connect

Read More

Photo Contest!

by Nina

Ann Wackelin's Class of Women Ages 50-62, Sweden
yoga_pearl on Instagram

Our Editor-in-Chief (me) has decided that we need some photos of older women doing yoga for our blog!

It was a post on Facebook by yoga teacher and blogger Linda Sama Karl that got me started on this. She was pointing out something I already knew, which was that while a significant proportion of the population who is doing yoga in the west consists of middle-aged and older women, this group tends to get overlooked by the media. In real life, I see beautiful older women doing yoga—beautifully—in every single yoga class that I attend. But, as we all know, images of older women doing yoga—or anything for that matter—don’t sell products, or so the received wisdom tells us. So we rarely see images that look like us in yoga magazines, yoga videos, articles in other magazines about yoga, or ads for yoga products. But, guess what? I’m actually not trying to sell anything here except the tools and philosophy of Yoga for Healthy Aging. So I can do whatever I want. And Linda’s post got me thinking that it would do us all some good, young and old alike, to have some great images of older women doing yoga out there, both on this blog and on Facebook. 

Second, you may have noticed that the photos on the blog aren’t very diverse (no offense, Baxter). That’s not because I hadn’t thought about having women on the blog, it’s just because I’ve been a bit lazy—or perhaps just too busy —about getting those photographs. I’m not a good photographer myself, but I did have Brad take a few photographs of Sandy Carmellini, age 53, a while back. 

So even though I have really wanted more diversity (including of race and body type), I just never got around to doing much about it. Now that Facebook discussion has jolted me out of my complacency and given me the idea that I could ask you—our readers—to help me with this project. What do you think? Want to join in by contributing one or more photos?

To be eligible, your photo must meet the following specifications:

1. Portray a woman or women over 50 doing a yoga pose (of any level of difficulty) or meditating. Any body type or race (diversity is encouraged!).
2. Be a digital photograph (or scan) in a reasonably high resolution and in focus.
3. Have a reasonably attractive physical surrounding (either outside or inside). So no messy rooms, even if we sometimes do yoga in messy rooms. Pets are allowed (though I have a limit on how many cats I can take). Urban environments are as good as nature shots.
4. If the photo is a single woman doing a yoga pose, the alignment must be one that I consider to be healthy. And no body parts can be cropped off, unless in a super artistic fashion.
5. Be aesthetically pleasing.
6. You must either be in the photo or have taken the photo (that way, I can have your official permission to use it).

Here are some examples of winning photos submitted to me recently after I left a comment on a Facebook post saying I realized I needed some good photos of older women doing yoga. 

Tina Kaufman, Age 70

Linda Sama Karl, Age 59 metta-yoga.com

To submit your photos, you can either email them to me (see Contact Us) or submit via our Yoga for Healthy Aging Facebook Page. There is no deadline because you will not be competing against each other. Multiple submissions allowed. All photos that meet the specifications will be winners!

The prizes? I will use these photos in our posts, with your name, age, and a web address, if desired. I hope there will be a huge number of prizes.

And you should feel free to “borrow” these photographs and give them even more exposure, as long as you give appropriate credits.

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook ° Join this site with Google Friend Connect

Read More