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Sometimes you have to take the plunge and attempt a self-portrait however you have to avoid it, it always comes back to haunt you as I remember as a school kid having just had my haircut on a Saturday afternoon with the cup final blaring out of the radio at the local barbers. I have forgotten how old I was, but any way the point being the barber was naturally distracted by every near miss, goal, bad refereeing decision and I ended up with a haircut from the medieval days looking like a trappist monk. The real problem arose when at school on the Monday…the school photographer was photographing our yearly photos, as a group shot and individually.
My school blue shirt and grey and blue diagonal striped tie were the best thing showing against the harsh white background even my mid blonde hair at that age looked out of sorts( now dark and the odd flash of grey). The photo was taken and I was asked how many copies I would want, I cannot remember how many but the whole family network had a copy and as with all Grandparents the photographs took pride of place on the Dresser or mantlepiece and they all say this is my Grandson and what a lovely photograph.
I have recently had the fortune to take some photographs of the teenagers going to prom and I wanted to try some more portrait work, as the weather was rather inclement I resorted to the only person I could think of namely me.
The tripod set up and the camera with aperture priority varying between f5.6 to f7.1 and carefully using the remote control I naturally had to every so often get up from the chair to look at the results. I rolled off about 35 images with varying degrees of head in shot, not fully in shot, my nose off to the left and eyes out of focus, but I found it was all good practice in understanding the camera and what to look out for in other people’s work.
Sifting through the images around ten of these I was happy with. But lesson learned, use someone else to photograph you unless there is a mirror or a flip out live view on your camera.