Seeing so many wonderful self portraits from so many talented photographers can both inspire and discourage you, depending on what your brain tells you. For me, I absolutely LOVE looking at photographs from all photographers and the group of self portraits that Aline Smithson presented were no different. Very inspiring! Self portraits can be discouraging since it's such a daunting task for some, me included.
I have many ideas in mind and I may or may not share them here. I will however, share this one. I took a break from my garage purge project to see if my idea of throwing my camera in the air would work. I have several photos of me jumping up and down in front of the camera while it's on a timer to laugh at myself and to see what comes from it. I thought, "why don't I stay still and have the camera jump around?" Well, I don't think I said that out loud but I wanted to try the timer idea to see if something could become of it. On my iphone, I have one application that automatically takes one photograph after a ten second countdown. I stood on grass just in case I didn't catch my iphone and because I don't have a cover or any type of insurance for it. The click of the "shutter" seemed to be delayed a bit so I would focus on my feet while it counted down and try to throw the camera in the air to get it to snap the photo around the same distance between my waist and feet.
I took around thirty or more shots and twenty of them I kept because there was a hint of me in the photo (strand of hair here, a toe there, etc.). Also, most were blurry since the phone tends to flip around when you throw it in the air. Once I had one in focus I stopped and put these two together. I still plan to do more self portraits down the road. For now, I will stay behind the lens.
