Project 52: Self-Portraits: Hidden

This is the seventh week of my self-portrait project for 2011. I started this because I wanted a photography project this year, there aren’t really that many photos of me and I’ve seen some truly amazing and creative self-portraits.

After the first week, Pepper gave me the exciting news she wanted to join in. We decided to give our project more structure by adhering to weekly themes. But why stop there? Sharing photographs of yourself is hard. Taking self-portraits is hard! But it’s also really important. So we included a link-up with each entry asking others to simply share a recently taken self-portrait and possibly consider joining us in this journey.

I knew we wouldn’t get a huge response, but I didn’t think that on week 6 we’d still average one link a week.

One of my oldest online friends, Carrie of Earthmovers and Sandcastles used to share a photograph of herself with every entry. She inspired me to do the same thing with my blog in 2005, which is one of the reasons why there are so many photos of me under my Flickr account. These photos weren’t about taking amazingly exposed, creative shots (though sometimes they were), they were about documenting a life.

That’s what Pepper and I are asking you to join us in doing. Give it some more consideration. You don’t even need to match our theme. We actually have only two tiny little rules:

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

Hiding Isn’t Easy

This week, our theme is Hidden and it’s easier said than done. My first thought involved driving our pick up truck out into the country, but I immediately realized that wasn’t going to work because my husband needed it to drive to work.

My next thought was to get a shot of me peeking out the front window of my house. I’m hidden away in this house most of the time so I thought it was fitting and could translate both figuratively and literally.

I got out my tripod and set it up in front of the house, set my exposure and realized there was a lot of glare from the front windows. I ran inside and got out my circular polarizer and turned it until the glare wasn’t so bad, then set my exposure again. My remote shutter release wouldn’t work from that distance, so I set the self-timer for 20 seconds and ran inside.

I tried this a few times, but the glare and darkness inside the house were just too much. That idea sank fast.

Then I went to my oldest son‘s room and spent the better part of an hour arranging his stuffed animals around his little table until I could finally produce this, with which I’m still not very happy.

So I guess this is okay for my third attempt at the theme. It’s just not even close to what I had imagined so it’s kinda disappointing.

Please feel free to link-up with your own self-portraits! If you’d like, there’s button code available in my previous self-portrait entry.