Rembrandt did it. So did early photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Ansel Adams. And during Take Your Child to Work Day on April 26, the sons and daughters of Kodak employees did it, too.

Self-portraits - likenesses that artists make of themselves - are as old as art itself. Early Greek sculptors, ancient Egyptian artists, and modern painters have all placed themselves in their own compositions. After a brief lesson on self-portraiture, the children of Kodak's TKM (Technical Knowledge Management) employees in downtown Rochester went outside armed with Kodak digital cameras to capture themselves in their own pictures.

Different ways to take self-portraits include:

Arm's length self-portraits

Simply hold your camera at arm's length in front of you, point the lens toward you, and press the shutter button. This way of putting yourself in your own pictures has become so popular that some EasyShare cameras now have a self-portrait mode that assures proper focus at arm's length and minimizes red eye when taking close-ups of yourself.

Remember to vary the angle of your camera.

Self-timer self-portraits

Reflection self-portraits

Shadow self-portraits

Parts of your body self-portraits

Creative self-portraits

Some EasyShare cameras have a panorama stitch mode that "stitches" together up to three pictures. Use that feature creatively to take a series of self-portraits in a panoramic scene, or even in three separate scenes that the camera combines into one.

I often bemoan the fact that I'm missing from our family pictures because I'm the one behind the viewfinder. Now I realize that I have only myself to blame!

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"Nowadays, we think of a philanthropist as someone who donates big sums of money, yet the word is derived from two Greek words, philos (loving) and anthropos (man): loving man. All of us are capable of being philanthropists. We can give of ourselves." - Edward Lindsey

And that is exactly what Audry Malcolm and Pam Brown, who work at Kodak Office in downtown Rochester, do during their lunch hour every other week: they give their time to help senior citizens and shut-ins.

Pam and Audry

Audry and Pam are volunteers for Meals on Wheels, an organization that provides nutritious meals to elderly, disabled, and housebound individuals. For the last seven years, Audry has spent two lunchtimes per month delivering meals; Pam, who initially filled in temporarily, has been volunteering for five years.

View of downtown Rochester from the apartment building & Apartment building across the Genesee River

The tall apartment building on the other side of the Genesee River where Audry and Pam distribute meals is about a ten-minute walk from their downtown office. Audry said that she appreciates getting out of the office twice a month to do this volunteer work.

"It's a rewarding experience to serve someone. Sometimes we are the only people that these folks see all day," said Audry. "We used to go to five or six people; now we just go to three. The others have gone elsewhere or to hospices."

Both the husband and wife of one elderly couple that they used to visit had surgery, and they would tell Audry and Pam about their operations when they brought the meals. "The couple was from Jamaica, like Audry," Pam added.

A volunteer driver transports the meals to the apartment building and distributes them to volunteers like Audry and Pam, who then deliver the meals to the clients. The tenants are very friendly and accommodating, even the ones who don't participate in the program, often holding the doors open or pressing elevator buttons for Audry and Pam when their hands are full.

Pam and Audry going through the delivery list & Audry delivering a meal

Audry and Pam know what it's like to make a difference in people's lives and to give of themselves. Yet by giving, they receive.

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At last count, we had 83 pets. Thus it was not with a great deal of enthusiasm that I met my daughters' most recent request: "Please, please, Mom, can we get a bunny?"

My two daughters spotted these cute, furry creatures for sale at the public market when they accompanied me there one Saturday morning. The saleswoman generously put a rabbit in their arms for them to cuddle. They were hooked.

"If Dad says it's OK, I have nothing against it," I sighed, "providing you are the ones taking care of it!" Since I'd had a pet-deprived childhood, I wasn't one to deny my children the company of animals. However, I didn't think there was a chance that Dad would agree to take in another pet.

But I was wrong.

Over the years, we had either owned or "pet sat" dogs, cats, gerbils, a rat, a mouse, hermit crabs, a cockatiel, finches, sea horses, guinea pigs, a hedgehog, praying mantises, frogs, a corn snake, garter snakes, ducklings, and lots of tropical fish and goldfish - never a bunny. But then, how much trouble could a rabbit be?

My daughters organized their appeal for a new pet like managers of a campaign. "Take us to the library," Kalyna requested one evening. The girls strolled out with a pile of books about rabbits. A few days later, they presented a five-page handwritten report to Dad called "All About Pet Rabbits" in which they described what was involved in caring for a bunny to prove that they knew what they were getting into.

Dad relented. "All right, you can get a rabbit - on the condition that if it doesn't work out after a few weeks, the person you buy it from takes it back." The girls nodded enthusiastically and grinned broadly. They spent the next few evenings daydreaming about their future pet and coming up with names for the bunny - "Anything but Bun-Bun," Kalyna insisted. I borrowed a cage from a coworker, which the girls set up in their bedroom. And the woman at the public market agreed to take back the rabbit, if necessary.

Bun-Bun - somehow no other name stuck - proved to be a noisy companion from the start. As the girls turned in for the night, Bun-Bun began to rearrange items in his cage. He thumped and rattled, hopped and bumped all through the night. And his cage needed to be cleaned often. Every day, in fact. Clouds of bedding drifted to the floor all around the cage, so the girls had to sweep up several times a day. Kalyna and Natalia did all this without complaining, but it didn't take long for them to realize that a rabbit was a labor-intensive pet. And he could only come out of his cage when someone was watching so that he didn't chew electrical wires or wooden molding. Somehow that rabbit wasn't giving them quite as much payback in terms of cuddling or affection as they had imagined. And he was far more work than they had envisioned! But it was a lesson the girls needed to learn on their own. Lest they forget, I documented the lengthy process of cleaning the cage.

Note: I moved the cage under a skylight so I could photograph this task under natural light. Using flash would have cast harsh shadows.

Four weeks after we got him, my daughters returned Bun-Bun. Now we're back down to 83 pets - one cat and 82 fish. However, we have some new pets incubating already...!

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A magnificent tree, delicate wildflowers, a charming landscape - these were the subjects of my early photographs. So were family, friends, and pets. But a stranger? Never!

Trees don't intimidate me, flowers don't glare, and landscapes don't make me uncomfortable. But confronting a stranger with my camera does. However, I came to realize that you can't convey the character of a country without showing its people. Thus, to depict a foreign country in pictures, I had to take a leap of faith and do the dreaded: point my camera at a stranger. And to my astonishment, I grew to like it.

Oh, it wasn't easy, not at first. I even considered getting some sort of periscope attachment so I could look the other way as I snapped a picture. Should I click and run? Ask permission? Start a conversation? I'll admit, I've used all these techniques, but the one that works best is this: I smile and make eye contact with my subject.

Sometimes it's easier to take pictures of people in a country where I can't speak the language; I can feign ignorance as I smile and click. But I do speak Ukrainian, so in Ukraine, I use several techniques to capture environmental portraits.

I bought a dried, salted fish from these fish sellers, then clicked the shutter before walking away. It was a lucky shot because I took only one.

Our car broke down during a road trip one rainy day, so as my brother-in-law tinkered with the engine, I approached a woman with an umbrella grazing her cow by the road.

The village woman in the orange sweater showed up as I photographed her barking dog. She was a more interesting subject than her vicious shepherd.

Both of these women weren't crazy about being photographed, so in each case I started a conversation, held the camera at waist level, and clicked several frames as we chatted.

This car parts vendor looked a bit intimidating. I smiled at him, clicked the shutter twice, and kept walking through the bazaar.

In my cousin's village, I got up before sunrise to catch the early morning activities of this rural community. I snapped a candid picture of this woman driving her geese out to the pasture. When she saw me, she was curious and came over to talk. Her daughter, who was out with the cows, joined our conversation and subsequent portrait session.

I'm not always comfortable walking around with a camera hanging from my neck. Or even with my camera hidden from view. I'm conspicuous simply because I'm an outsider. Photographing strangers is at times embarrassing, at times exhilarating, and always rewarding. Several of my favorite travel adventures, which I'll describe another time, began with me snapping a picture of someone I just met. Photographing strangers started as a challenge but has become a passion.

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Over two decades ago on this date, I was pulled out of a lake, blue and not breathing. Forty feet below the surface, my ice dive had gone dreadfully wrong. I had panicked when the equipment malfunctioned, screamed through the gushing bubbles, tried to make it to the surface... And then peace overtook me. Profound, remarkable peace...

I recall the shock of seeing a crowd of faces against the ever-gray February sky peering down at me as I lay on the ice in a dripping wetsuit.

"I'm alive," I blurted. "I'm alive!!"

But my diving partner and man I had hoped to marry was not. I had responded to resuscitation; he hadn't.

During those few minutes under the ice, my entire world had unraveled. My life plans were shattered, my future was irrevocably changed. As I lay in the Intensive Care Unit at a local hospital that night, I kept thinking, "This is like a bad movie. It can't be happening to me." The sound of the gushing bubbles from the frozen regulator haunted me that night and for many years to come.

The next day, I was wheeled into a regular hospital room with a view of the dismal winter landscape -- an overcast sky and a few snow-covered hills dotted with barren trees exactly as they were the day before. But on this day, the sight struck me as the most beautiful I had ever seen. I had so completely accepted death under the water's surface that I realized with a start that I had not expected to see the snow, the trees, or anything else on this earth.

I spent the next year rediscovering the world around me. I jumped tracks from pursuing a Ph.D. to exploring the world through my camera. I felt that the blinders with which I'd been rushing through life had been removed. I slowed down and spent my free time gazing at icicles and snow, wondering why no one else took the time to notice their delicate beauty.

In the spring, I rediscovered wildflowers and birdsongs.

In the summer, the sight of a grasshopper brought me to tears as childhood memories of catching grasshoppers with my dad flooded back. Once again I realized just how completely I'd accepted death under the water's surface. I felt I was privy to a great secret: each moment on this earth is a special gift. It saddened me that most people rush through life and don't appreciate this gift.

People became more important to me. I realized that belongings are temporary but memories are forever. The only thing I truly own is my time, and how I spend it reflects what I value. My greatest treasures aren't the material things I've accumulated, but the people in my life.

Many years have passed since that time of rediscovery. I catch myself rushing through my days, fulfilling my roles of employee, wife, mother, pet caretaker, cook, driver, gardener... But once a year on February 12, I stop and remember...

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Yuri and his mom, Summer 2005

When my husband Yuri heard that his mother broke her hip before Christmas, he booked a ticket home to visit her. Like my parents, Yuri is an immigrant from Ukraine, so visiting his family requires crossing the Atlantic -- a 24-hour trip from our doorstep to theirs.

Our family often travels to Ukraine in the summertime to visit Yuri's parents, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Thus over the years during our many visits, I have come to know not only Yuri's family, but also many villagers, especially the elderly women. While Yuri was in Ukraine visiting his ailing mother this January, a sense of urgency filled me: Would my mother-in-law pull through? And how many of my elderly friends would I see again?

Halia (left) and Nadia, 2004

Halia and Nadia are octogenarian sisters. They live in different villages but visit each other every summer. I enjoy visiting their quaint homes and hearing about their lives, which are so different from my rush-hour commute and days in front of a monitor in a cubicle. I often feel I have nothing to offer them, but they give so much of themselves when I stop by.

Halia is legally blind; Nadia had a heart attack in fall 2006 and almost didn't pull through.

Teklia, 2004

Teklia, a widow, engaged me in conversation one summer day as I walked around the village, camera around my neck. She asked me to take her picture and invited me for tea. Her only son had moved her to this village to be near him, then he left the country to make a better living elsewhere. Uprooted from her lifelong home, Teklia was lonely. I visit her every summer I'm in Ukraine, always sharing some delicious tea.

Teklia has very high blood pressure but takes no medication for it.

Orysia grazing her cow, 2004 / Orysia with dog, 2005

I met Orysia, another widow, while she grazed her cow in a common pasture. She was quite outgoing and described with amazement that during a visit to Canada, her hosts took her to a restaurant and simply left money on a table to pay for their meal -- and no one would steal the money!

Orysia had a stroke soon after I met her and fell under her cow as she was milking it. Her German shepherd saved her life by pulling her from under the cow and barking until help arrived. Orysia is now partially paralyzed. She had to sell her cow.

Orko, 2005 / Hania, 2005

I met Orko and Hania through my husband. Both were bedridden, lying in the same stuffy room as if awaiting death. Because they were both invalids, the neighbors brought them food, but their delivery was erratic, and Hania and Orko were often hungry. �I’d give you something to eat,� Hania offered with typical Ukrainian hospitality, �but all I have is some bread.� And it was stale. Yuri and I brought them soup and bread, meat and chocolates. But we left for America a few days later.

I was haunted by memories of this frail couple. Hania died that winter.

There are more, many more elderly, whom I've befriended and who've claimed a piece of my heart. And some are right here in Rochester.

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature,
But beautiful old people are works of art.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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