For our first SOAR! photo exercise, Me Ra challenged us with a self portrait exercise back in January. Oy! I love being behind the camera, but being the subject of the photos is usually a source of major discomfort for me. I rarely enjoy seeing myself in photos – it always reminds me of all the physical things I need to work on (losing weight being the big one, no pun intended).
The exercise itself required two photos: one image of myself, and the second image of an object that represents me – who and where I am on my journey. I pondered this assignment for a very long while (weeks really), and I finally had to admit that taking the leap into self-portraiture was really frightening to me. After all, once I completed the assignment, I’d have to post it, exposing not only my creative work to the world but also the feelings I have toward myself. In general, I feel pretty confident about where I am, but even on a good day, my old friend self-doubt always seems to park himself in a dark corner. (On a bad day, he’s at my front door ringing the doorbell over and over again, with the exuberance of a preschooler who’s finally tall enough to reach the button.) Every day I wonder, am I good enough? Am I smart enough? Will people like me? Fortunately, the volume of those questions is usually dialed down to “white noise,” but the thought of allowing the world to see this very personal piece of my soul has admittedly cranked the volume up a few notches. So I did what I always do in these situations…I procrastinated.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, something clicked as Kirk and I were carting loads of toys up from the girls’ basement playroom that was collecting water after a rapid snowmelt followed by a torrential downpour. We were setting all the toys in the girls’ bedroom to be sorted and find a new home there later, and the pile as it grew was becoming a giant, disorganized cluster you-know-what. In my frustration, I looked at that pile and I thought, THIS is my picture. THIS is the object that represents me…sudden chaos from what was once order. (What a downer, right?) But really, I think everyone can relate. Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, something comes along and shakes it all up, and for a moment (or two…or seven), you feel like throwing your hands up in the air and letting chaos win. But what I knew when I looked at that pile and let my frustration simmer for awhile was that the chaos was only temporary, and that before long, the toys would be redistributed and everything would be okay. And it was. I’m happy to report that since we moved the toys out of the basement and into the girls’ bedroom, they’ve received a little more love and the girls have really been enjoying them. Silver lining, see?
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| "Chaos from Order" (f/4.5, 1/30 sec, 800 ISO) |
Self-portrait exercise part 2 – check. What about part 1…the photo that I actually have to be in? Ummm…. (You could add this to your heap of evidence, O dear family and friends who know and love me, that I might just be a cart before the horse kind of gal.) I procrastinated some more, and then last night as I was reading my Kindle in bed before finally calling it a night, I felt a spark. I was reading with the lights out, using the book light attached to my cover, so that when my eyes got tired and my mind calmed down, I could just shut the Kindle off, set it on the nightstand, and then drift into dreamland. And I thought to myself in the bluish-white glow of the book light, wouldn’t it make an interesting photo to use the book light as the main source of light in a picture? And as my mind turned, I thought, for that matter, a picture of me reading in bed would be a pretty accurate self-portrait. Reading is a HUGE part of how I nourish my soul, and it’s one of the main activities I turn to when engaged in an expansive period of procrastination. So tonight, out came the tripod and everything I’ve been learning about photographing in low-light, and what seemed like 100 exposures later, I think I managed to capture “me.”
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| "The Reader" (f/5.6, 3 sec, 320 ISO) |
What I loved about this exercise was that it required a great deal of self-reflection, not only in deciding what direction to take with the photos, but also in preparing a journal entry to accompany the photos introducing my version of “Christa” to the world. And it was a chance to practice some of those techniques I’ve been learning on my quest to master my camera and become a real photographer. Powerful stuff. Thanks, Me Ra, for challenging me to get to know myself a little better! (And you know what? In spite of everything I learned about me, I still actually think I’m pretty great! But I think I’ll try to work on that procrastination thing….)
Cheers!
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