Sometimes I like go go back into my Flickr stream, find the last page (the oldest photo) and just start looking at the photos in order, from past to present. In fact I find it kind of fun to adventure into other people’s Flickr streams and do this…especially folks I might find myself being inspired by (or even intimidated by) and see where they came from, how their photography or art has evolved, and the slow yet beautiful process that we all go through to find our voice as photographers or artists.
So I thought today I’d invite you along on this adventure with me and share a bit of the evolution of how my adventures in self-portraiture began and evolved. This feels important to share, to not just show you the photos of now, but to share a little bit of how the learning along the way is so important in taking photos now.
It all began, both my adventures in photography and self-portraiture, in 2005 I got that cute little silver point & shoot and joined a 365 project group on Flickr. At the time there was also a website called Self-Portraiture Tuesday that had weekly prompts to explore. I had just caught the photo-addiction bug and was taking photos of all the beauty I came across but those two project helped me start to turn the camera towards myself.
That photo on the top left…thats the first photo you’ll find in my Flickr stream! Where it began! These are a collection of the first selfies I took.
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I wanted to share with you where it all started. Where we all start. Just bravely and playfully going for it…risking feeling silly for the sake of feeling creative and feeling seen.
Looking through the photos from way back then in 2005 I feel this big love for her. She was working night shifts 40 hours per week and going coming out the other end of a funk (aka depression). In some of the photos in my stream I see her fatigue, her weariness, her burnout and I am so grateful to her for still showing up in front of the camera on those days. Especially on those days.
The first stretch of selfies are very much in the mirror shots with my camera in hand and this was my happy place for the first year or two. Then things shifted and I started to experiment with shooting so the camera wasn’t in the shot and then even trying to put the camera on the ground.
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It was around that time that I had the opportunity to go live in the SF Bay area for a few months and thats where the adventure truly blossomed. I was staying nearby the most gorgeous cemetery that had acres and acres of land to explore and would spend all my free time wandering there or around the neigbourhood and just seeking bits of beauty.
I was also soaking up the gorgeous California sun after years of not only living in a grey city, but doing those night shifts. I feel like this time in California thawed me out, got me rested up and woke me up. This was definitely the time when I truly became a Light Hunter and built an even stronger understanding of light and how to explore it through my camera.
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Once I returned from California, the addiction continued. Props especially scarves and skirts became my inspiration and I started to go on even more regular photo adventures. I found a few places nearby that became my selfie spots: a ravine a block away, an unused railway track and a botanical garden nearby.
I feel like it was the California months and the months after when I really started to feel like I had found my voice, in 2010. This is 5 years after I initially started exploring photography and self-portraiture that I felt like I could speak my stories the way I craved to into my photos. So yes, when I look back at those first 5 years, I see the way I was learning so much and I needed to go through them to find my way home to my own voice.
While all along the way self-portraiture has been about showing up for myself and re-writing stories, it was this time that I really started to dig deeper, to let myself move more in photos, to be more playful, to let the light help me create my vision. I found so much healing in taking these photos.
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This is where sharing my love for photography started, when I began teaching You are Your Own Muse (my pre Be Your Own Beloved era self-portrait E-Course) and other courses that followed like Be Your Own Beloved (which registration is now open for)! Sure, my shooting was often now for a blog post or for new content for class, but that didn’t lessen the experimentation. It didn’t change the fact that I was still re-writing stories, still healing, still needed to show up for myself on a regular basis in front of the camera.
These days I feel like self-portraiture has really blossomed as a whole with the growth of so many of us having little iphone or phone cameras and ways to share it like Instagram. It feels much more accessible now for folks to have a digital camera and I love how many people are turning their camera on themselves and that it is becoming much more normalized to.
And here I am. 7 years after that first photo. Still learning. Still a beginner at heart. Still letting my voice evolve. Still savouring the sunshine. Still healing. Still sharing. Still learning new tricks. Still creating. Still showing up in front of the camera and creating a visual narrative of this life.
Where has your journey taken you? Perhaps taking a bit of time today to look back in your Flickr stream or at your photos for even just the last year and see how you’re grown, how you’ve evolved, what might have been point along the way where you made a leap. I’d love to hear your story of evolution too!
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