For the month of January I’ve committed to focussing my subverted selfie project on my participation in a Skillshare workshop that’s been designed to be done over 30 days. Specifically, the course is called “Creative Journey: 30 Days of Self Portraits as a Means of Self Discovery” and it’s taught by professor Lucy Lambriex (who also teaches the workshop I’ve been doing about overcoming cameras shyness).
Day 02: THE OBJECT
The second day’s theme asked students to choose an object that evokes a meaning, and speaks volumes about yourself… and portray it in a way that part of you is in the photo as well. This post also served as my subverted selfie post for January 2, 2022 on Instagram.
Which object did you chose? I chose a small get well soon teddy bear, that holds importance to me as I got her while I was hospitalized last fall for issues related to my ongoing depression. I even wrote about the meaning she held to me in this Instagram post from September 27, 2021. At first, I thought it was going to be hard finding an object, but once I glanced at my nightstand and saw my little bear, whose name is Bianca, I knew I had found the object to portray in today’s selfie.
What was it like to play with? I enjoyed holding her in different positions. She comforts me so easily when I’m feeling anxious, overwhelmed or stressed. I’ve photographed myself with this bear before, and as such, I knew I wanted to shoot this object with me differently than I have done before. I think maybe in the future, I’d incorporate movement into the shot, by perhaps tossing her up in the air somehow. But that would require more work to do, and using an interval timer to shoot several shots in a row.
Day 01: THE BODY PART
The first day’s theme asked students to explore a specific body part in a variety of different angles. It made me remember what Ron Long had to say about photographing wild flowers, in that it was best to work your subject from as many angles.
I actually made the first photo my subverted selfie project post for January 1, 2022, which is an ongoing Instagram project I’ve been trying to do daily since January 1, 2020. It’s also posted on my Flickr.
The project had me answer several questions about today’s prompt, which I answered as follows:
Which body part did you pick? Ultimately, I decided to focus in on my index finger. But shooting this finger wasn’t necessarily my first choice. I actually started playing with shooting my middle finger.
Why? Part of my initial choice to focus on my middle finger was as a homage to Ai Wei Wei and his STUDY OF PERSPECTIVE photographic series he did between 1995 and 2003. For me, I found myself frustrated with having to shovel the sidewalks again, as they had been filled in by the City of Surrey street ploughs, who send snow from the street flying onto the sidewalks. So I considered posting a photo and complaining about their work crews, who can and have gone slower along the streets when they see me clearing the sidewalks, and when they do that, the snow doesn’t go flying onto the sidewalks. But I didn’t like the photos I was getting. The lighting wasn’t bright enough and I wasn’t able to get my camera to focus in on my finger. Wei-Wei’s fingers aren’t always tack sharp either, but I wasn’t looking to get an exact replica of the kind of photos he took. So ultimately I moved away from that as his photos do carry a lot of history, and more serious issues that people have with more authoritarian governments, and I didn’t necessarily want to equate my gripe with my local city government to those who have much more serious concerns, which can even border on matters of freedom or life and death circumstances. I also wanted my finger to be in focus, without using flash, and that just wasn’t happening because of when I tried making this photo, in the early evening. I think that photo would have been easier to make had I done it earlier in the day when it was brighter. You can see one of Wei-Wei’s photos compared with my attempt posted below.
The decision to shoot the other finger made more sense, it was easier to get different angles of it, and it didn’t have the negative connotations that the middle finger has, as it’s often associated with a rude gesture.
Describe what it was like to chose a body part to portray? Overall, I admit I had some problems trying to figure out which body part to shoot for this project. I wish I had made the decision to shoot that finger earlier in the day as it’s easy to shoot that anytime, I could have played with it under different lighting conditions and doing different things… which would have given me more photos to choose from at the end of the day.
Describe what it was like to see the result? I’m happier with my index finger photos though. I still shot them outside, but closer to my house where I got nice lighting from a motion sensor light that was on. I could have tried the middle finger again but without the sidewalk shown, it would not have had the same connotations as my original idea had - I’d have been just flipping the bird at a small pile of snow. So I took a photo of my finger shown holding the shovel, and then I took several shots of just my finger in the same spot.
