Let’s Shoot Some Self-Portraits! {Photography Education, Life Prints Portrait Design}

Posted on March 11, 2011. Filed under: Articles, Education | Tags: contest, photography, self portrait |

Yesterday, I wrote about how important it is for photographers to have a picture of themselves on their website. I mentioned finding another photographer to do a photo session swap with, and then today I had another idea. I’d like to take this one a bit further though.

Have you ever done a self portrait of yourself? I have. I’ve done them when I need to test lighting and I’ve even done one when I didn’t have anybody else to do it for me and needed an image for my website. It’s been a while since I’ve done that, but it was fun and garnered some interesting images for me. So I thought I’d throw a little challenge out there. I want everyone, whether you’re a photographer or not, to do some self portraits. I don’t care if it’s a picture taken at arms length from your point & shoot camera or a fully staged studio shot. Just get out there and start snapping away

Why would you want to do this? First, it’s fun… really. Are you goofy, fun, outgoing? Then try to capture that in some creative way. Are you shy, introverted and this sounds painful to you… especially when I tell you that I want you to post it online? That’s okay. Break out of your comfort zone a little bit and see what you can come up with. Let’s see shy little ol’ you. Here’s a picture I did of myself a few years ago when I was testing how to use a hair light in my makeshift home studio…

(I think this was before I learned to pluck my eyebrows!)

Here’s what we’re going to do… for the next week I want everyone to start working on your self portrait. Then next Friday (March 18th, 2011) I want everyone to post one of their images over on our Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/lifeprints). We’re going to have a contest and give away some prizes ( I don’t know what they are yet because I just thought of this, doh!) But we’ll have some fun with it. I think we’ll do different categories. How about these: most original, most professional, goofiest, best lighting and best smile? I’ll announce what the prizes will be next week and then once you’ve posted your self portrait, we’ll use likes to vote. You’ll only be able to receive one vote from a person (we’ll double check usernames) and whoever wins with the most votes in each categoy will receive a prize. This is going to be fun!

So start thinking about ideas for your self portrait. Tomorrow, I’m going to post on ways to come up with ideas. Feel free to chime in if you have any great ideas now that you’d like me to include.

Alrighty then! The ideas I come up with at one o’clock in the morning. Yipee!!!!!

Can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with

Lora

P.S. If you have a website or blog and you post a comment here, make sure you put a link to your site so that you can get some incoming links going! It doesn’t have to be obnoxious, just finish the comment with your name and put the link under that. No problema mis amigos!

And don’t forget to come visit our main site… http://www.lifeprintsportrait.com