2013 Challenge, Week 33 : SELF PORTRAIT

“Self Portrait”, by Oscar Paradela

In today’s Instagrammed world, overwhelmed with duck-faced teenaged girls posting 10x a day, we’re a little sick of self portraits, or selfies.

“Self Portrait”, by Fran Simó

However, for the serious photographer, the self portrait is often a time-honored tradition of taking your skill level through a unique challenge of replicating what you might do in creating a portrait of someone else, yet forcing yourself to accomplish it alone.

“Self Portrait”, by henry kujda

I’m not talking about holding your phone at arm’s length, and shooting yourself. I’m talking about making a nice portrait of yourself, considering the whole package, like lighting and depth of field. The end result being a respectable portrait that you happened to take yourself.

“Self Portrait #2”, by Nick Weinrauch

“Self Portrait – Eye Macro”, by Nick Fedele

However, you could try other techniques as well. Maybe challenge yourself to a macro self portrait! Or something fun like a highly monochromatic silhouette at sunset?

Whatever you do, please take some time to make a polished and high quality self portrait. If you put it off, and scramble at the end of the week, you’ll end up with simply a selfie. If you make an effort of it, you’ll end up with a portrait, of yourself, that’s worthy.

“self-portrait: one cigarette”, by marie-ll

Don’t forget that part of the fun of PhotoChallenge.org is sharing with one another, and hopefully receiving feedback. We try not to be a “that’s great” kinda community. I prefer actual critique, and thoughtful encouragement, myself.

We tend to share to our Google+, Facebook, and/or Flickr communities and groups. Some of us also blog our photos. If you don’t share to those other locations, you really should! You could post a link to your blog post, encouraging us to comment and critique over there.