at the beginning of my year at school, we were challenged to take a self portrait. being photographers, a large portion (not all, but most) of us don't particularly enjoy being on the front side of the lens, but in an effort to grow and push our boundries, the teaching staff wanted us to break out of our little comfortable zones and show the world a piece of ourselves.
we were challenged to do this during each phase (4 total). it started off difficult and ended more personally than i could have ever imagined. so here are the results of a year of self reflection (for better or worse) with a little explanation of each one.
PHASE 1
while trying to come up with my first concept, for some reason my love of words was the first thing that came to mind. i threw around some ideas involving ditionaries or thesauri, but that seemed lame...and then, what words would i use? then it occured to me that, rather than using some of my favorite words (my original idea) i should make it more personal and try to use words that describe me. so i enlisted the help of a few friends, and my mother, for suggestions of what words they associated with me. armed with a little pile of words i went to the task of figuring out how to incorporate them into the photograph. it didn't take me long to get to the idea of writing them on my hands and that also put my hands between the lens and my face. score. (c:
and yes i did write all of that (even on my right hand) i'm pretty skilled. (c; i did not, however, take the actual shot...the sweet ashley elizabeth hit the shutter for me (and what a fine job she did, eh?)
PHASE II
i got a lot of really great feedback on my first self portrait, so when we were given the task to produce yet another one, it kinda freaked me out. i knew i couldn't do something as cool as my first one. so i procrastinated. i thought of a few cool ideas, but i just couldn't pull any of them off so i tried to go as simple as possible. one of my absolute favorite photographs from my childhood is of my mom and i when i was about 18months. i had the photo with me, so i tried a few different ways to incorporate it into my self portrait. this is what i came up with.
thanks to amy-lynn for the help on this one. (c:
PHASE III
and speaking of amy-lynn...she had been giving me a hard time for doing everything i possibly could to not show my face, that i tried to come up with a way of doing a photograph with my face. one of my favorite teachers (paul teeling) loves, loves, loves out-of-focus pictures. i think that may come from his years of fashion photography and everything having to be perfect. when you're exposed to that much "perfection" it's probably easy to want to get as far from it as possible.
so, inspired by paul...and feeling slightly guilty for never showing my face...i thought i'd make a compromise and do a paul teeling inspired shot. blurry, low light and in your face.
PHASE IV
my fourth and final self portrait for the year was something i had been contemplating and i went thru a lot of various ideas. the final shot came from the fact that a few people mentioned that my tattoo was visible in my phase one photograph and they thought that was cool (regardless of how unintentional it was). it also appears in the phase two shot and it got me to thinking that since i did a shot that was very much centered around my mother, that i should attempt to do a shot centered around my dad.
any shot with my tattoo has a bit to do with him since my tattoo is very much about my dad, but i wanted to try my best to tell the story with a picture knowing all the while that it would still remain ambiguous.
again, thanks go to amy-lynn with her help on this shot...she has great ribbon arranging skills, no? (c;
