For once I find that I don't really have much to say. It's been drizzling constantly all day (except for the 30 seconds where I was running from my car back into my house, during which time it decided to poor) and so, as I do most of the time in such grey weather I was feeling a bit lazy and didn't really want to try anything fancy. Just take a photo and have it done with.
I'm loving this 365 self-portrait project so far. Especially the "typical" - shall we call them - portraits. I find that through them I am really looking at myself for the first time in so long that I can't even remember the last time. Have I ever? Not the kind of looking where you're glancing at your outfit as you get ready to walk out the door or getting so close to the mirror in an attempt to examine the latest blemish that your breath starts fogging up the glass, but looking, seeing, an image and a person, vulnerabilities and strengths and finding something strong enough to love about each of them that I feel satisfied - and hey maybe a little proud - to publish them on the ever unforgetting internet.
I am not saying I hated looking at myself before, I just don't think I ever took the time to do it. And there is something different about these pictures, even than all those other thousands that get posted after every outing on Facebook. Those pictures remember an event. These pictures a person. Please forgive me if I leave it there, I feel these few paragraphs have been clumsy and are only half there but I just haven't had time to think through an eloquent synopsis of the way I'm feeling. Its a start, maybe I'll review it later.
On another note - I AM SO TOTALLY FRUSTRATED BY THIS 365 PROJECT AND MY CAPS LOCK KEY WHICH WONT LIGHT UP TO LET ME KNOW WHEN CAPS IS ON!!! (Mac keyboard). I find taking photos of other people and places so natural and thats so to some extent even when developing ideas for the images I want to create in this project. It's so simple, I see, I frame, I choose some settings I may even give the subjects just a little bit of direction, half press the shutter to focus on my chosen focus point and - presto! I have an image. An image which the majority of the time I am satisfied with - give or take some minor exposure adjustments. But making a reality of the self portraits in my head is infinitely more frustrating. I wouldn't say its more complicated but certainly more frustrating. The framing, the focus points, the changing light, the changing angles of my face, my stupid eyes that are always getting distracted and my mouth that is so intent on showing the world every worried thought that passes through my head. I have all of these images that are in my "almost there pile" and it's just so vexing to know that if I were taking the same photo of someone else I would not have made that mistake and we could then quickly move on. All I want is to be able to see the image I am about to take before I take it - IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?!?!?!
Phew! Thanks for letting me get that out. I feel much better now :D... I guess I did have something to say after all.
This image is the black and white version. It's nice and I really loved how this treatment brought more attention to the metal mask but in the end, as I almost always am, I was just a little teensy bit more attached to the colour version.
This image is a different, earlier shot from todays 365 image photoshoot. It's perfectly okay I think I just liked the emotion the other "official" image showed.
So which one would you have picked? Let me know.
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These photos were taken in my bedroom with the window at my back and white sheets thrown all over the place to get rid of any distracting objects (no joke, my room looks like a war zone right now... I guess I had better go and clean it up :S)
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