It's probably because I just TRIED TO PAY WITH MY AMERICAN EXPRESS.

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My Bourbon Turban

Both drunk and sober I have attempted to wrap a turban/shemagh around my head and I always end up with less than stellar results. The process usually involves a mirror and several YouTube Videos, until I eventually either give up or create something on my head that I could never wear out in public.

At best my turban will resemble that of a white lady who has wrapped her hair in a towel after stepping out of the shower, and at worse, a droopy, unraveling catastrophe that would lead people to believe I’ve just been through something harrowing… and barely escaped.

Most consistently, “Ravished by wind and hardships” is what I would call the look of my turban creations. Wrapping these enormous scarfs on your head (properly) is a skill if not an art form, and it always leaves me frustrated and tied up in knots. Sometimes, literally.

I assume it is something that gets easier with practice and repetition, much like tying a tie.

(Which, for me, by the way, is another activity that always involves a mirror and YouTube videos…)

The whole process is somewhat exacerbated by the discouraging fact that— with my pale skin and goofy face— no one really wants to see me wrapped up in a shemagh anyways. Besides, it always feels disingenuous to me—something akin to cultural appropriation or playing dress up— and so these days you will only find me attempting to wear a head scarf if I have, for some good reason, been specifically asked to do so. 😆

“Hurry! We need you to look disheveled, disoriented, and totally out of place. So, quickly now, white man, put on this head scarf! No one help him.”

Oddly enough, my best and arguably most plausible attempt at wrapping myself in a shemagh happened back when I was still drinking. Perhaps you need the kind of obsessive, fixated, focus that only alcohol can sometimes bring to a task.

It could also be because around that time I was watching a lot of Homeland, so maybe I was just conditioned to seeing a pale, blonde-haired, white person comically wrapped in a shemagh and trying to pass herself off as inconspicuous in the Middle East, and my brain knew just how to replicate that look around my own face.

This experiment reminds me of another similar story, and that would be me drunkenly trying to learn to balance/carry items on my head in Africa, which you can read about HERE!

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The Rise of A.I.

There's a lot of talk in the photography community as of late about not only the possibilities of how Artificial Intelligence can help to make our jobs easier and help to streamline several processes, but also about the possibility that A.I. will eventually be capable of doing/taking our jobs.

I am here to tell you that day is here.

As I was attempting to make silhouettes of myself for this very story (about me learning to tie a turban), Photoshop suggested that I use their new AI feature, to save time.

Doing what I needed to do is very simple and should only take two or three clicks, but I thought, "What the heck. Let's try this."

So I put the photo of me up and then simply typed the instructions, "Make all black silhouette."

After about two minutes of rendering, Photoshop was able to produce this for me:

Which I think we can all agree is absolutely perfect, and exactly what I asked for.

Photographers, be worried. Be very worried.