shooting myself


As the year draws to a close, I have started collating the photos I will be including in the 2015 edition of my annual photobook print. I previously talked about why I do this, and why everyone should.

This year has been particularly eventful for me. I've travelled quite a lot. There have been weddings, milestone birthdays, etcetera, etcetera. And as the 'guy with the camera', I've found myself shooting a lot of it, so I have many photos to choose from.  There are, however, very few photos of me. The ones that do exist are hardly printable.  Why? Well, I'm the guy with the camera. I'm always behind the camera, hardly ever in front of it. 

Even more troubling is the fact that looking back, this has been the case for a long time. My friends and family can all look back fondly at the great photos of them I've captured over the years, while I'm left with occasional reflections in mirrors and shop windows, silly iPhone selfies and other such.

There are also hardly any photos of me as a child. In fact, there are fewer than 10!  All of which I've now scanned and backed up. Odin forbid I loose those, and my hard drives - I would join the ranks of the Loch Ness Monster and Snuffleupagus when I'm gone.

I can't time travel, alas!, but I can ensure that going forward, I either hand my camera to someone to document my existence, or at least make more self portraits. I will, as a consolation, have my own personal conspiracy theory in the future - the guy who popped out of nowhere into existence.

Comments

  1. Unknown22 November 2015 at 12:52

    There's nothing wrong with doing a Vivian Maier. She had them guessing for years.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ade22 November 2015 at 14:01

    I was thinking of her when I took this :). I've got an OM-1 so I'll be trying out some B&W selfies soon.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Talatu-Carmen26 November 2015 at 01:26

    Hahaha, I know the feeling. Much fewer photos of myself than everybody else at events, and usually the only photos I like of myself are those I took myself.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ade28 November 2015 at 01:04

      Talatu, maybe we can swap cameras and shoot each other :)

      Delete
  4. Talatu-Carmen5 December 2015 at 08:09

    hehehe, just seeing this. Yes, good idea. I do remember liking the few you shot of me a few years ago. ;-)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

boots 500AF - part 1

Image
Much displeased am I to report that my nostalgia project isn’t going as smoothly as I expected. Why is it that in a mostly plastic camera, one of the only metallic parts turned out to be the least durable? The source of my said displeasure is a thin little strip of metal. Thus the story goes. Camera number 3 finally. I was excited about this one, as it was my first ‘good’ camera. Branded ‘Boots 500AF’, it has a 34mm f4.3 autofocus (hence the ‘AF’) lens. Come to think of it, both the 34mm (as opposed to 35mm) and f4.3 (rather than f4) are quite obscure values for a film point and shoot. I have no way of telling, but I assume the ‘500’ in the name denotes the maximum shutter speed of 1/500 the camera can achieve, but that’s pure speculation on my part. It has an auto flash, and the lens does a faux zoom action when turned on. Very cool indeed. I read somewhere that it was a rebranding of some Japanese camera, but again, I have found no evidence of this. Oh how...
Read more

praktica bx20

Image
Up until the camera showed up in my life, I had only been using rangefinders and point-and-shoot cameras.  I had gotten used to the parallax error compensation ‘slightly to the left, slightly up’ movement during composition.   I had also given up on all on-camera metering and usually shoot full manual mode, relying most of the time on Sunny-16.  That’s great of course, if all you’re doing is street or travel photography outdoors when you are mostly shooting at distances at which parallax errors don’t matter much, or the minimum focal distance don’t ever come in to play, and you have predictable good light. Like anyone else, I occasionally get the unexplainable urge to take a photo of my feet, or my coffee.  This urge is impossible to resist.  There’s nothing more photographed than own feet and cups of coffee.  If you ever wondered why this is, there is your answer, once and for all – it is a natural urge like thirst or hunger. Ba...
Read more

10 christmas gift ideas for film photographers

Image
The holidays are around the corner. This means peace on earth, joy in heaven, and of course, presents! For that ( analog ) photographer in your life, what do you get them for Christmas that they would appreciate a great deal?  Here are some ideas; [This blog post, as usual, contains affiliate links to Amazon.  I may be compensated if you make a purchase via a link I've provided.] 1. Film This is the obvious one. If your loved one is an analog photographer, or enthusiast, one thing they're constantly buying is film . Find out what camera he/she uses and figure out what film format it takes. The most likely formats are 35mm or 120 (medium format) . You can probably find film at any local camera store - if you're in the UK, at Boots , Snappy Snaps or at a supermarket like Asda . Otherwise you can buy them online like on Amazon or eBay. 2. Polaroid Camera Unless your loved one develops their own film at home, they would usually have to wait for ...
Read more