Over the weekend during our Focused Lens Workshop we all took some time out to create a self portrait. Our goal was to put something of ourselves into an artwork about ourselves.

It was a lot of fun. And we learnt a bit about ourselves and our photographic practice.

Most find this exercise rather confronting. Particularly finding a photograph of ourselves that we like.

There are the technical issues you may face. I just held my point and shoot up and took some, with it pointing back at myself. At other times I have used a tripod and a delay or a remote release. Wirelessly connecting a smart phone allows you to see yourself on your phone and control everything from the phone.

Smart phones can be a good option.

Well, that is this weeks challenge. I will illustrate it with a few older ones too. You are welcome to add a few older self portraits of yourself, but you haven’t completed the exercise unless you create a photograph of yourself after reading these words and posting it.

As a side not, many of you have been diving into your back catalogue of old work to post examples of the weeks exercise. To be honest, this is not in the spirit of the weekly exercise. If you really want to learn, explore, reinforce , develop and grow, then I recommend you go out and create new work for each exercise. It is through doing that we learn the most, in particular in doing with a conscious intent. To create a photograph using chiaroscuro, exploring how it works, will teach you more than finding something that just happens to fit in with the brief.

Anyway, this week let’s have some fun, and show each other who we are talking too.

Comment about what each self portrait says about the photographer.

What do they tell you about the person who is taking the self portrait.

Am excited to see the results.