Generally, I don’t take many photos of people, and I have even less of myself. So on a whim, I decided to take part in the Twitter365 project (I’m @crumpet on Twitter, of course.) The photos don’t have to be strict self-portraits, but I’m going that way as I find the confines of it a challenge. How do I take a photo of myself every day for a year and have each and every photo be interesting? I’ve been reading a lot of Merlin Mann’s writing recently, and as a result, am brewing up my seemingly annual post about talent Vs hard work. I have the feeling that this project is part of that. Doing something each day and working my arse off to try and make it something I’m proud of.
Week one has been all about kinnearing my face. For all of these photos (well, except for the first one, taken on a whim with Photo Booth when I found the project), I set the camera to full manual mode and took a hundred or more random shots of myself. Then I went through winnowed down to one.
Each of these has been post-processed in some way. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Some people would think this is not true to the self-portrait ethos. That the only way one can present the “truth” is to show the subject straight out of the camera. But truth is fluid. Every second of every day we edit ourselves either consciously or subconsciously, choosing what we present to the others. Even the simple act of taking a photograph is a level of separation; the type of camera, lens and settings will have an effect on the how the light is captured in your box.
So editing each photo here has not just prettied things up a little, but helped hone and focus my intentions, getting to the heart of the matter.
Edited to add: Behold the glory of the Magicshopping Wonder Space.