a week of me

A whole week of "me." Wow, that sounds incredibly self-centered and maybe a little narcissistic. Although, I suppose self-centered is the definition of a self-portrait project and there is no way around it.  Then again, the focus of this project isn't so much myself, as it is just capturing myself FOR my daughters. And surely I'm over analyzing this whole subject, so...moving on!

When I take pictures of my girls, or anyone really, I try to just capture them doing what they do. Sure, I'll ask Laci to smile at me once in a while, and there are the obligatory holiday pictures where I try (usually unsuccessfully) to get her to pose for me, but I really enjoy just capturing her candidly. A voluntary smile now and then is just an added bonus. I wish there was an easy way to capture the same type of pictures with me in them, but aside from hiring someone to follow us around with a camera all day, I guess I'm out of luck.

In the past week, I have experimented with using a tripod, the shutter timer, and handing the camera off to the hubby. I have yet to get an amazing picture of my girls and me, but I suppose that is beside the point. The point is to just get in the picture at all, and so far, I'm getting it done, and stretching my imagination in the process. You can only take so many of the hold-the-camera-at-arm's-length-and-smile kind of shots before it gets really boring.

My favorite (and the easiest) method at this point: the good old camera phone. It's always with me, I can hold it at whatever weird angle I need to, and the camera app lets me tweak colors and add borders. For future reference, I do recommend cleaning the mirror prior to any bathroom shot. Tell me, how do I splash all the way up to the top of the mirror? Too vigorous face washing?

Anyhow...wait, is that a word? Anyhow, I'm getting there with this whole self-portrait thing. I'm optimistic that by the end of the month, one way or another, I'll get a keeper. And if not, at least my girls will know that during the month of October 2011, we were together a lot.