I have been going through a lot of old photos this last month, trying to pick out the best to have up as artwork. It is a fun process and sucks you into the history of your life and how much time has changed you and everything around you. I cannot believe the boys are as big as they are because it seems like only yesterday I was changing diapers and helping them learn the alphabet. The saying is so correct – the days can seem long, but the years are incredibly short.
One thing I did notice throughout the process was the notable absence of decent photos of me. I have lots of “selfie” hold the phone out, but I don’t have many thoughtful portraits. Ones where I actually set up my camera on a tripod and a timer or remote shutter to take a portrait. And as timing can be serendipitous, a photographer I follow on Instagram posted a self portrait and spoke about how for two years she led a project called “Portraits of Me” where the photographer got on the other side of the lens once a week. All things fell into place and this will be my 2019 project. I am not ambitious enough to do one a week right now, but I will aim for at least one a month.
So for January I decided to keep it real. I didn’t do my hair (other than to get it out of my face), I have no makeup on, sporting my glasses and am in a baggy sweatshirt and leggings. I decided because it was winter, moody lighting was the way to go since our sun is so low in the sky or gone altogether. I used a north-facing window on a dark, cloudy day and found that the hardest part of this was to nail the focal plane. It is hard to focus on something that isn’t there. But that’s the best part of trial and error – I ended up getting it in the end.
