Self-Love, Week 8 of Selfie Saturdays

You know, last night I started writing this week’s post about focus, hoping to finish this morning, when my thoughts and plans were interrupted by the amazingly inspirational post that Courtney wrote for this week’s Selfie Saturday submission about an epiphany she had shooting this week’s challenge. I would highly recommend  that you read it, because I doubt I can have the same inspiring words for you, especially if you are a mother. I’ll wait right here, until you’re done reading and we’ll continue…..

…Ok, now that you’re back and inspired and maybe finally see this whole thing, not as a goofy photography exercise ( which it is), but as something more. I started this challenge for 2 very specific reasons and since most of you joined a bit afterwards, I would like to explain again why I am here and why I am doing this.

For me self-portraiture started with the fact that I liked being in front of the camera, I loved documenting the life of my friends, my husband and I. I wasn’t really into it. I was never content with NOT capturing important or fun moments of our lives. Even when I had a little point and shoot, my first camera, I still insisted on propping it up on some trash can or a piece of furniture and taking a picture of me and my husband.  They were crooked, ugly and goofy, but that didn’t stop me. I had to capture that every important moment withboth of us standing there. It just hadn’t evolved into a “conceptual me” thing.

This was one of my first selfies, back before I even had a DSLR, shot at home, using the timer, to be sent to my husband at work.

{don’t you dare laugh at this}
This is our first selfie together in 2003, with the point-and-shoot propped up on our car’s hood. My pose and face is completely retarded, while my husband looks gorgeous.

This was one of the first better selfies, shot  in 2004, I believe. The point was to take a picture of my first ever brownish hair color for my mom. I ACTUALLY used a remote for this one.

So at that point I was only shooting self portraits for a reason: to send to my mom or husband, to capture little fun moments of our lives, but nothing more.

When I got my first DSLR, I proceeded to take pictures of flowers and rocks and what not, like we all do trying to  learn photography. Soon I became bored with shooting inanimate objects and realized that I need a human to photograph. I wanted to see the beauty of a face, curvature of the body, I wanted to invoke a feeling, I wanted to set up the shot, I wanted to be creative. Since we didn’t have kids, I turned to my husband for help.  Like most Americans, he hated posing for the camera, so I was flatly refused.

So that’s when I really stepped in front of it.

There’s no better on-demand model for your photo shoots than yourself. It worked for me. I didn’t have to call anyone to come over to let me shoot them. I didn’t have to rely on anyone. I would just come up with an idea, set it up and shoot. At first it was all about putting on a pretty dress and simply posing in front of the camera. Soon that became boring and pointless. How many pictures can I take of myself in the same damn pose and a different dress?

Flickr saved me, it became my catalyst into self-portraiture. To see so many amazing people doing self portraits on almost daily basis inspired me. I joined a few groups and started my journey toward creative photography. Where I am now as a photographer and as a model is solely due to my time doing self-portrait challenges.

It was a huge community of like minded people, for whom selfies weren’t embarrassing, they weren’t vain, they were an art form, a way to express themselves, to create something amazing.

It seems that in American culture, loving yourself, taking pictures of yourselves is something dirty and embarrassing.

But why? How are we any worse of a subject than a rock, or sky or even a neighbor’s kid? What makes it so shameful to turn the camera onto ourselves and capture a moment in our life to be remembered forever?
Yes, if all you do is snap arm’s length photos of yourself  with a point and shoot, it seems that the only purpose served is vanity. But when you capture a moment, with your family, or alone, when you spend an hour setting up so that you could shoot that concept that has been swirling in your head, how can you call that anything but expression or art? Capturing the beauty of a human being, even if that person is you, is still ART!

When I went into serious modelling and moved to NYC, I fell away from the self-portraiture. It was too hard, too time consuming, and honestly, I had “better” things to do like attend club openings, magazine parties and award shows. I did not improve as a photographer in that year one bit. More than that I bought a pink point-and-shoot camera, and my trusty DSLR was safely towed away on my bunk bed in the model’s apartment gathering dust. Thinking back, this was THE TIME to pick photography back up. Hello, it’s New York through the eyes of a model! I could have captured some amazing shots and even did a daily vlog of my life as a model ( which I so regret I didn’t do). But all I came away with was a bunch of low quality party shots and in the mirror snaps of what I wore that day or in the makeup chair getting my hair worked on.

BUT…, I still do have some sort of timeline in my photos of what went on in my life that year. I still can go through them and reminisce.

Which brings me to my next point.

I realize that most of you only got into photography because of the birth of your child. You wanted to capture him/her growing up. I get it!  But what about the rest of your life? What are you going to do ten years from now, when you look back and all your see are, literally, thousands of similar photos of your child and none with you in them. Christmas photos – no mommy, trip to Mexico – no mommy, new year’s cruise – no mommy. Is that what YOU want? Is that what your child wants?

Isn’t the point of photography is to capture life’s most precious moments? Then how come most of you choose to exclude yourself from them? Due to fear of what? Not looking pretty enough? Not knowing how to pose? Not owning a remote? Not enough time? The excuses can be endless, but when you look back all you can see is you being absent.

Lack of confidence is NOT AN EXCUSE for anything! Lack of confidence is THE REASON you should be tackling life’s little challenges.

When I started this challenge, my goal was to give women a reason to take photos of themselves, to build our confidence. This was meant to be in integral part of the GET FIT GET HEALTHY GET CONFIDENT challenge, Sonya and I started, to help women get in shape, eat healthier and feel better about themselves. I wanted to share all and any information that I had collected over the years of taking selfies and modeling, to help you take better pictures of yourself, to give you more confidence and a reason to take self-portraits.

But this is so much more than just that. Starting this, I knew I needed to encourage girls to step in front of the camera. But  I didn’t realize what A MASSIVE BLOCK most of the women have against taking their own photos. You sit on the sidelines and watch and think that some day you will get enough courage to do this too. But it will never happen. Week after week, you will get further behind on Selfie Weeks, forgetting previous tips and finding it even more intimidating, the more challenging the prompt become. While it’s never late to start, there’s also something to be said about jumping in and dealing with the lack of confidence when and if the issue comes up. Close your eyes and JUMP!

I commend the girls who picked this up and ran with it right away! I now realize what that must have meant for them, to step out of the shadows.
{as corny as it sounds I think I will have to make a button specially for those “founding members”, who in spite of their fears got into self-portraiture}

I encourage you to go through the 5 Weeks of Selfie Saturdays and read the tips, if you haven’t done it yet {links to them are on the side bar}. I encourage you to stop coming up with excuses for why this is silly and you can’t do it, and start coming up with reasons for how it will benefit you, your confidence, your future memories and, like Courtney mentioned, your kids.

Do you want to raise your daughters and sons thinking it’s shameful to be proud of yourself, to be confident, to love the way you look? Will you reinforce that feeling that society seems to create, that to love oneself is vanity, to feel beautiful is shameful? Because if YOU can’t teach your kids self-love, then who will?

I know some of you are scared {even if you don’t admit it to yourself, and brush the selfie thing as something silly}. But if you try it once and see the feedback you get from the other women and even your husband, you’ll understand that no one will ever ”judge” you, no one will think you’re “ugly” or “fat”, if you have the confidence. Everyone will think you’re the coolest, and how they wish they had “THE COURAGE” to step in front of the camera themselves.

I will continue doing these little tutorials, until I run out of things to pass onto you. And then I will start back up with a weekly theme for our selfies. It’s way too easy and boring to just snap a daily picture of yourself, over and over and over again. “Here is me again. And this is me on the couch, and here i am wearing a headband”. I want you to challenge yourself and we will do so by shooting themed self-portraits once there’s nothing new to learn.  And you will see how, slowly but surely, your skills as a photographer and a self-portraiture artist start getting better and better with each challenge, until you no longer feel “silly” being in front of the camera, until you know what you’re doing, and until you finally show up in that family vacation picture.

 

So the challenge for this week is the following:

1.We need to help our bloggy friends step out of the shadows. If you’re currently participating in Selfie Saturdays or will start effective this week, write a post {early in the week} about why you’re doing this challenge and why you feel it’s important for you to take self-portraits and encourage your readers to join up this week. Women, mothers in particular, need to feel sexy and beautiful and if we don’t encourage our friends, then no one will.

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 2. By next Saturday, take ANY self portrait, holding a sign “I AM BEAUTIFUL”.

3. Link your photo here at Selfie Saturdays on March 26th, as well as upload it to Jill’s Flickr group I AM BEAUTIFUL

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