Project 52: Self Portraits: Silly Faces

Last week I announced my plans to take self-portraits once a week for a year to give my Project 52 some structure. I’m astonished and so grateful for the responses and support I received!

To be honest, I am scared to death of doing this. The most obvious reason self-portraits will be difficult for me is my weight. I don’t look like I want to look and it kind of sucks sharing photos of yourself under those circumstances. However, that’s also motivation to use this year to lose weight and document that loss through these shots. Look, I’m not promising anything, but it’d be nice if it happened, huh?

Added to the pressure to try to make myself somehow magically appear to be pretty (I promise you, I won’t photoshop myself too much… or will at least provide the SOOC for you to see how much I cheated.) I’ve never done an artistic self-portrait before this project. I’ve seen so many creative ideas, but I’m not sure I could do much better than mimic those.

For example, this is my original self-portrait for this week. I was trying to do that whole “multiple me” thing, but ultimately I’m just not very happy with the results. Mental note: Next time, don’t try to take pictures with a bright window as a backdrop.

Taking 52 shots in a year of “Nature” or your cat or black & whites does not have the same emotional investment that 52 self portraits do. Something gives me comfort and makes me feel like not only can I do this, but I can have fun doing this:

I am not alone.

Last week, I motivated Pepper of Pepper Scraps to begin her own Project 52 and before long, she decided to join me in my self-portrait efforts. Not only that, but she had the great idea to invite all of you to join in as well!

I got a lot of comments last week that you’re interested in doing something like this, but… No buts! There’s so many people I know participating in Project 365, why not do a sub-challenge to make one of those weekly shots a self portrait?

Join in Project 52 Self-Portraits!

Every Monday, Pepper or I will host a link-up so you can challenge yourself to take self-portraits along with us. To help get your creative juices flowing, there will be a weekly theme as well. Here’s what’s coming up for February:

• 1/31: Silly Faces
• 2/7: Reflections
• 2/14: Love
• 2/21: Favorite Feature

You’ll have a full week to link up with us. There are only two rules:

1. You should share a recently taken self-portrait
2. The link should be the absolute URL of your photo or entry, not a link to your homepage. Links to Flickr pages are fine!

If you want to share a link or this awesome graphic Pepper created, that would be awesome. You don’t even need to be participating in Project 52 or have a shot that reflects the weekly theme, but I hope you’ll be motivated to do both!

This week’s challenge is Silly Faces. Usually we carefully select photos to share to avoid strange or funny faces, but this week we want to see you being silly!

Here’s my contribution… I had grand visions in my head for how I wanted to set up the shot, but I ran out of time to execute it so another arm’s length self-portrait it is!

Now enter yours: