A Behind the Scenes Look at Taking Self-Portraits

I’ve been wanting to tell you what happens behind the scenes when I go out on these photo walks.  To share every single photo with you with out censoring any of them.

I know when we see one selfie or self-portrait it is so easy to think that the person just went out and captured that one photo, effortlessly.  Which really isn’t the case for most of us!

Of course, as we all know in the land of Instagram, our visual story is highly curated.  We pick the one photo to share with others, and while there is nothing wrong with that at all…it makes it so easy to “compare others outsides to our insides”.

So the other day I headed out to the forest near my folks house (where I’m presently visiting) for a short photo walk.  I had been in this forest years ago with my camera and I remembered the forest looking especially magical.  It turned out that I didn’t see a single person as I was taking these photos which made me SO happy.  You see, something happens when we can put down the camera and create a safe space for ourselves to move, dance, play and simply create a relationship of openness between ourselves and the camera.

Often those moments are interrupted by people walking by our chosen photo spot and that is bound to happen.  Truly, 90% of the time I take selfies or self-portraits there are people very nearby.  I try to at least block myself out of their view (which is why I love taking photos at the local community garden…so many spaces in that lush garden to find a little space for one’s self) but sometimes you truly just need to go for it and take the photo, whether people see you or not.  If we wait for the ‘perfect’ moment, it will be hard to come by!

That said, there is a reservedness that I find in myself when people are nearby and on this photo walk it felt truly lovely to get to just wildly play & move, each time returning to my camera to press the shutter again.  This is truly where the healing happens for me.

So here is my entire photo adventure, from start to finish (except that top photo was taken later in the photo walk).  There are no photos deleted from this photo shoot and it is in the order I took them (left to right from this first image down).  Nothing is photoshopped of course (as I don’t normally) but I do slightly play around with photos in terms of colour and exposure as I shoot in RAW so I do need to save each of these images to a JPG in order to share them with you.

I wanted to share this ALL with you so the next time you head out with your camera or iPhone to take self-portraits you might remember that it takes EVERYONE lots of photos to get that one they love…and give yourself permission to take more than you might normally (and I hope to help you get a little extra playful too)!

I didn’t have my tripod with me so I just took my camera out and put in on top of a log I happened to come across.  At times I would put my purse or iPhone under the camera and prop it more upwards so I could get my whole body in the frame.   I didn’t have my remote with me either so I was going back and forth between the camera and where I planned to stand, pressing the shutter each time (which is fun, but indeed…a remote does help the process go faster).  I had brought a lens I love (the Canon 50mm 1.4 for you folks who love gear) that I know makes the forest look pretty magical.

How did I get myself in focus without a remote?  I have my tricks and the one I use here is all about calculating the distance I’m going to be standing away from the camera and setting that manually on my lens (its actually a lot easier than it sounds and is a trick I share in depth in the Beloved Camera E-Book).

Sometimes this means I miscalculate, but honestly, it often ends up being the slightly blurry ones I end up liking the most!

I had no intention of sharing this entire photo shoot with you and I’m glad I didn’t plan it out that way as I’d worry that I’d unintentionally ‘curate’ the experience and not have felt quite as free in the moment as this one ended up being!

Normally I would look through all the photos of the day and pick my favourites or often I know which one I really want to focus on and just jump past the rest.  Lots of these I wouldn’t have shared with you. Some I definitely see as outtakes, some I like but love another one a bit more and many are just playful and fun…and I can see them as part of the process of getting to one that I really love.

For me, it truly isn’t just about the final image.  When I think of what makes a photo walk so healing & nourishing or what makes me feel like selfies have such beautiful potential to be healing for not just me, but for all of us…it is the process of getting those photos where we can see ourselves with love that make the difference, more than the photo itself.  I feel like when I finally do get one of those photos that I really can see the woman I am becoming, it feels like every one of those circles of bokeh around her are stories of where she has been and how she got to that moment.

It is neat for me to look at them in order too as I see how the first couple dozen were really about playing and then something happens in these last half dozen that allow me to see that zen I tend to feel by the end of a photo walk, where I return yet again to my body and I can really see a woman who has learned how to fill up her own well in these photos!

That first one in the post is the one I would have chosen out of all of these to share.  It feels interesting too, as I love it because it doesn’t hide some of the parts of my body that I’m still in the process of learning to love.  My arms & my back.  They may not fit into a standard of what is ‘supposed to be beautiful’ (as lots of people fat-shame about back fat) but thats not what I see in her.  They are just the way I’m shaped, especially when I arch my back.

I’m learning to see the woman in the photo more through a lens of love rather than shame with each photo walk.  It has been years on this journey, but I tell you…change happens when we step in front of the camera and invite ourselves to be witnessed by ourselves with compassion.

We don’t dig into the technical side of taking self-portraits in Be Your Own Beloved (it feels important to me that it can be done with any camera including an iPhone and with no need for any photography or selfie-taking experience) though during the class I am always available to answer your technical questions.  And class starts September 1st!!  But if you are looking for more technical info on getting playful with your camera when taking selfies or self-portraits, the Beloved Camera E-Book is indeed packed with all my tricks for getting photos you love with your DSLR!

So next time you head out on a photo walk and ponder putting the camera down and stepping into the frame, I hope you remember that it takes a whole lot of photos for ALL of us to get to that one we love and give yourself the permission to keep snapping photos, opening the door wider to the potential for self-compassion with each click of the shutter.