Self Portraits

If you were to quickly scan through my Instagram feed you might not think I am much of a photographer. This is because I am the subject of a large portion of the images, which for most people would mean that someone else was handling the camera. For me that is not the case... I shoot them myself. You see, I am a bit of a loaner when I travel... which for the most part is intentional, but in some cases I have no other choice. As a freelance photographer I have a lot of freedom, not tied down to any location when I am between commercial photoshoots. So when I want to take off somewhere in the middle of the week it can be hard to find a travel companion who can be as spontaneous. But also, for the most part I prefer to travel alone... you can find out why in the video below from my 2-month long solo road trip in an Airstream. Some people might consider these tendencies selfish, but I consider it therapy.

Getting back to the original point... no I do not bring a photographer along to shoot photos of me everywhere I go. Instead, I have an elaborate setup so that I can take photos of myself. Most people would do this with the timer built into the camera, but set I use a remote which gives me a lot more control over the shot and requires a lot less running back and forth... and allows me to time the shots where I am in motion. I set up my camera on a tripod and compose the shot, figuring out exactly where in the frame I will be and set the focus there. Then I run in front of the camera, take a few shots with the remote, and run back to review them and make whatever changes are needed. This normally takes a lot of trial and error to get the image just right, since I can't see what the composition looks like while in front of the camera. I continuously have to make marks on the ground of where I am positioned so that once I find the right spot I can return to it to refine the shot.

Narcissistic? Maybe. But in my opinion a blank landscape can lack depth. When you insert a person into the image you can create a story and a mood. Since I am solo most of the time while traveling I have resorted to shooting photos of myself. You can see another example of this process in this solo project I did for Vans in the video below. This post contains a collection of images I have shot of myself over the years, all of which required me looking like a crazy person bouncing in front of and behind the camera countless times until I got the shot I envisioned.