Category Archives: Self Portraits

January 20, 2014

Possibility & Self-Portraiture

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I know, self-portraiture can sometimes be a bit scary.

Because, there is so much unknown to it.

Will the same story I always see in my photos be reflected back at me?

Will it feel like proof of some of the stories I believe about myself?

Will I just feel ugly, or invisible, or not enough?

Or maybe we are just absolutely sure we know what the result of taking a self-portrait will be. Because we only know the story we’ve always seen in our photos, one that feels like proof of the way we might feel about ourselves or our bodies.

For real, I get all of this.

Cause I’ve been there.

This is exactly how I felt at first and every so often I get a wave of it coming back at me.

Here’s the thing though.

What it is so easy to miss when we are totally ready to see the same-old photos that we expect we’ll see…that we forget about possibility.

When folks join me for the Be Your Own Beloved class it is truly one of my favourite things to see, when they awaken to the possibility.

That we might, for the first time, see a photo of ourselves that we recognize with kind eyes.

That we might be wrong about not being photogenic, that we actually might not hate taking photos of ourselves.

That we might in fact be able to take photos of ourselves we feel really proud of, that make us feel seen.

That they can not only take photos of ourselves that we like, but that we might find our voice again.

That it isn’t about getting a ‘perfect’ picture. Its about creating space to let ourselves be witnessed, by ourselves & others.

It is possibility.

That doesn’t mean that we won’t also take those photos that tell those old stories. The key is that when we are open to that possibility, we get both of those kinds of photos and we (maybe for the first time) get to really choose and take the reigns of how we get to see ourselves.

For me it was a turning point. It made me realize that I knew in my heart I wouldn’t look back on this time in my life and especially in these photos with regret and wish my body was different, or that I was thinner. But I knew that there was major potential for me to look back and regret not looking at this point of my life and choose to see myself with love.

I needed to start being a part of the visual story of my own life.

Yes, we might find ourselves taking photos that bring up our inner critic but we will also likely take ones that make us smile wide and we will be given the chance to choose self-compassion over self-critique.

So, lets open ourselves to the possibility of a new way of seeing ourselves.

Even if that feels scary (especially if it feels scary)

Even if we hate having our photo taken and self-portraits feel really vulnerable.

Even if self-compassion feels really far away.

I have a new session of Be Your Own Beloved coming up and I hope that if this resonates, you’ll join me. This class isn’t created for people who already feel wildly confident and don’t struggle with seeing themselves with kindness. It is for folks (like me) who have had the weight of a negative self-image on our shoulders for far too long and are ready for change.

It was created because these are the tools that I most needed at the point in my life when it felt like I was fed up with so much self-hate and was ready to find some ways to change that (and yes, it was terrifying). I created Be Your Own Beloved because these are the tools I still need to strengthen and ground in a place of self-compassion each and every day.

I also wanted to share with you that there are a few changes ahead for the Be Your Own Beloved class after the February Session (don’t worry, the core prompts & structure are all staying the same…I’m just adding in some extra awesomeness) and there will also be a price change. So if you’d like to take the class at the super affordable price of $49, this is your session!

I can’t wait to explore the possibility that will unfold in this class with you and am so excited to invite you into this experience of seeing yourself with more compassion!

January 14, 2014

Making Someday…Today

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I’m slowly making it through Geneen Roth’s Book Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment. Her books take me a while to get through as they are so packed with epiphanies for me that I often have to pause & journal about just one line or paragraph before continuing on. That is the best kind of book in my opinion (though I’m realizing after renewing this book from the library 3 times and I’m still not done…I just might need to buy it).

Today the chapter I was reading was about our parallel lives, the way that we create these other lives for ourselves usually referenced by statements “When I’m thin I’ll….” or “When I have success life will be…” or “When I’m loved everything will be…” where we imagine our parallel life and how it would be different if only we were different.

When we focus on our ‘parallel lives’ (which I know I often do) we disconnect from the life we’re living right here and now, seeing it as not enough.

Of course, everything gets channelled through the lens of “How does this relate to self-portraiture & self-love” in my brain these days (I can’t help it….I just love this work so much)!

It got me thinking of the way many of us save being in photographs until we are _____________ (lose weight, have a haircut, get better at doing our make-up, have a new outfit, have cooler shoes, etc).

I thought I’d share one of these moments I had lately which arose in the process of putting up a profile for online dating. I though I should get my photos taken. You know, confident, sassy, ‘the new me’…ready-to-date photos.

Of course that would involve getting my haircut first. Oh, and what will I wear? I imagined how awesome the photos would be.

I mean, a fun thought and all…but it quickly became a gigantic list of all the things I’d need to do to get that perfect photo. It became something very distant and became a “When I do this I’ll be ready to date” which of course meant I had to do all these things to be ready.

Yes, my parallel life was happening right there, that I’d be ready to date and I’d find love if only I had the perfect photos to make it happen.

For reals, this was my thought process. Yes, even though I am indeed a self-portrait photographer. Indeed, even though I have a computer full of photos that were not only perfectly fabulous to use for a dating profile, but in fact were representative to me of the journey to find confidence again. Photos that came from my journey to see myself with love and that I already felt beautiful in.

Of course, after a while I had to call myself out on this, and now have 2 photos up on a profile (trying to make some steps towards dating this year) both of course, self-portraits that I took during a session of Be Your Own Beloved. I figure if I am learning to see myself with love in these photos, then they are absolutely the right ones to put on a dating profile! Oh my…I actually can’t believe I’m telling you this story, but it kind of cracks me up in retrospect!

So I thought I’d ask you…do you have any photo related ‘parallel lives’ that are holding you back from just picking up the camera here and now and just sharing a photo that feels present with where you are at today?

If we shift away from saving taking a self-portrait for when our body changes, or we look “better” or we get the right outfit to finally invite ourselves into the frame? What would happen if we just let ourselves be enough to step into a self-portrait today?

If you happen to read this and pick up your phone or camera and just go for it and take a self-portrait…use the hashtag #beyourownbeloved so I can see it and cheer you on)!

January 8, 2014

Looking Ourselves in the Eye

One of my favourite moments of every day is getting to click on the #beyourownbeloved hashtag and see what new photos are up. Even between sessions (there is a class starting soon) there are lots of alumni, folks responding to prompts on my blog or newsletter or folks who just resonate with the #beyourownbeloved message sharing their self-portraits.

Its bliss to me, getting to look them in the eye and cheer them on.

The other day I decided to do a bit of an experiment and click on the general #selfie hashtag as truth be told, I’m so content in the bubble of the self-portraiture that I get to see when I check the #beyourownbeloved hashtag as well as on my Instagram feed from my peers…it inspires me to no end.

But I realized I’m not as aware as I could be about what the pop culture of self-portraits is these days. I don’t follow Kim Kardashian or Myeli Cyrus on my Instagram and have no clue what kind of selfies people, teenagers, celebrities…everyone outside of my blissful bubble of self-loving selfie takers…what do they do?

So indeed, I clicked on the hashtag #selfie on Instagram and poured through the images there. Some were definitely what I expected but lots of them amazed me, as I really feel like this culture of self-portraits isn’t all about vanity. Sure, many of them may have been taken from that place and I understand why people see self-portraiture in some cases as vanity.

Yet I didn’t want to get distracted by those and miss out on all of the people out there who are using it as a way to get to know ourselves, redefine ourselves, reclaim our relationship to what we are ‘supposed’ to look like. I saw a lot of that too.

There was one type of self-portrait that particularly intruiged me, like the one I took as an example of below. Folks taking a mirror self-portrait and looking at the phone.

I saw this type of self-portrait so often and it honestly isn’t something that I’ve done in a long time so I gave it a try (you can’t know unless you try, right)!

It felt comfortable, it felt normal…but something was missing. Part of the experience of self-portraits that is so important to me wasn’t there. It felt a bit disconnected to me.

It was then I realized what it was that was missing, eye contact, and I remembered why it feels so important to me to make eye contact with myself in a self-portrait.

It might be looking at ourselves in the mirror, eye to eye.
Or looking at the lens of the iPhone or camera, looking the camera in the eye.

I especially love that last one as when we look at the picture, we get to look ourselves in the eyes!

Now, if you click on the hashtag #beyourownbeloved in Instagram you’ll see we make a lot of eye contact in the class…and oh my…they are my favourite prompts and there are some powerful reasons why we make so much eye contact. I’m going to keep those prompts saved for you to experience Be Your Own Beloved (the new session starts soon…and I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise for you)!

But I wondered if you’d join me in exploring eye-contact in a self-portrait today?

Eye-contact in our self-portraits feels important to me because:

It invites us to check in with ourselves in that moment
It feels engaged and invites me to take a moment to really settle into my body
It allows me to look back at these photos and look myself in the eye

Sure, there are plenty of times when I don’t make eye contact and there is nothing wrong with our photo if we don’t…but it feels like a really important piece of the puzzle in seeing ourselves with love in our photos…..being able to look back at ourselves, in the eye, with love.

Will you join me today in taking an eye-contact self-portrait?

You might:

Take a mirror self-portrait and either look yourself in the eye or look into the lens of the camera
If you are using a camera or iPhone that has a front facing camera, look yourself in the eye in your phone!
Or take an arms length self-portrait with your camera or phone…just reach up and aim it back at yourself and look into the lens!

Of course, please do come share it with us if you are on Instagram or Facebook using the hashtag #beyourownbeloved

December 30, 2013

My Body Acceptance & Self-Love Realizations of the Past Year

I think some of my favourite posts here on the blog this year were the steps I made in my own self-acceptance & self-love path….what I loved about each of these were that they happened when I most needed them to (and least expected them to) but all of them felt like really big progress on my own path of self-acceptance and seeing myself with kindness.

This was also the year that my teaching about self-portraiture really shifted from being artistically focused to being all about using self-portraiture as a powerful and transformative tool for seeing ourselves with compassion. Be Your own Beloved was born. Doing the class myself 4 times this year (and participating in them as much as possible) feels like a big part of these realizations. These activities can be might transformative and doing them again and again this year I realized how many deeper layers of learning about self-love unfolded.

The clearest way I can share with you how things have changed in my relationship to my own inner critic is that things just feel quieter, gentler, simpler. After having your inner critic shouting at you for most of your life, you can’t help but notice when bits of quiet arise.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what happens when we find ‘self-love’ and make progress on our path. Like with most goals, I feel like we might expect bells & whistles and self-love that feels ecstatic. But quite honestly, I’m discovering that as I’m healing some of my own pain, it just feels really quiet and gentle. No bells & whistles…just a feeling of respite and release from my own inner critic.

These moments were ones I won’t forget because they were just simple yet powerful moments on ever evolving path of self-love in this lifetime.

I wanted to share a few of the posts with you from this past year that have been awakenings on my self-love path & I hope they might resonate with you on your path too!

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Because of, Not in Spite of

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Little Bike and a Lesson in Confidence

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Shrinking Body Shame (and how Running Tights helped me realize that)

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Our Changing Body Stories (and my Long Legs)

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Before & After: Revisioned

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Worthy: My Word of the Year for 2014

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Did you have some self-love or body acceptance realizations this year? I’d love to hear about it so don’t hesitate to leave a link to your blog post or share your experience with me!

December 16, 2013

Tips for Taking Selfies In Your Bathroom!

I know…its another one of those things that people criticize ‘selfies’ for…that they are taken by folks in their bathrooms with bad lighting!

Here’s the truth: Some of my first self-portraits were taken in the bathroom and some of my favourite ones are still.

It really was a wonderful way to start getting playful with self-portraits! Here are some of my early bathroom mirror adventures (many of which are tricks & prompts that I still use and that I’ll be sharing in this post).

In these grey, rainy winter months here on the West Coast it can be really challenging to take self-portraits outside and my home doesn’t have much natural light let alone when the days get short. So what are we do to do to finish a 365 Self-Portrait Project or just check in with ourselves in a self-portrait?

We work with what we’ve got!

Yes, to keep inspired during these winter months. What do I do? I take selfies in the bathroom (and I’m not embarrased to confess it)! Often when I’m running a session Be Your Own Beloved, many of the self-portraits I take end up being ‘bathroom selfies’ as sometimes when we’re trying to take a photo every day for a month…some of them need to be indoors or we need to do them at the end of a busy day, and the bathroom makes a fabulous spot to make that happen!

If you’ve ever felt silly taking self-portraits in your bathroom…this is for you! It doesn’t mean you are vain! In fact I think its one of the best ways for us to keep our self-portrait practice going and take photos we feel empowered by to keep us going until the sun comes out more regularly again!

So, here are 6 reasons why you might want to take self-portraits in your bathroom:

There might actually be awesome light in your bathroom (and I’ll give you a few tips on how to that in todays post)!
There is often either white walls (that help reflect the light) or a neat coloured wall or fun wallpaper! All of which make great backgrounds for your self-portraits!
Its the one place you might actually be able to find some privacy in your home to take self-portraits!
There is usually a mirror in the bathroom (and I’ll give you some tricks on how to make that help you out)!
There are also usually props that you can use in your photos nearby!
You can use Apps or Filters to get experimental with your bathroom photos and help you shine in your photo!

Maybe the first thing I should tell you that if you’re thinking you need a big bathroom in order to take awesome self-portraits in there…you don’t!

My bathroom is as tiny as they get. There are 2 tiny wall spaces I can use that are about the width of my body…thats it…and that is really all you need!

Light

So, something about most bathrooms in homes or apartments, is that bathrooms have good light! Often there is some sort of ‘vanity lighting’ around the mirror. In terms of indoor lighting in our homes (and not natural light that might come into your home) this might be the best artificial light in your house because it is so bright!

Here’s the challenge. We can easily do a few simple things that can make that not light not work to our advantage.

We block our own light! Now, if we are taking self-portraits in our bathroom, the easiest way to do it is to an arms length self-portrait and when we put our arms up to do that, they can also be our biggest challenge! We can easily put our arm up between ourselves and block our own light!

It doesn’t make it a bad photo, but there is SO much more potential for awesome light than by blocking our own. To change this we simply need to notice where the light is coming from and notice when we put our arms or our phones in the way of that!

Other tips for getting the best light out of your bathroom:

Get close to it! Experiment with where you are standing. With any light source, the further we get away from it physically, the less light there will be.
Notice where you are standing in relationship to the light source. Are you facing it? Sideways towards it? Try taking self-portraits at each of those angles and see what works best for you.
Try turning off the flash! I know since you are indoors it might seem logical, but lets also explore what light you have in your bathroom and how to work with it without the flash! Indeed there might be times where it is really useful, but I definitely encourage you to try exploring bathroom self-portraits without it!
As you might notice with the examples above of my early bathroom self-portraits…many of them had this really yellowy light to them. The colour temperature or white balance is something that is a wee little challenge with some bathroom self-portrait adventuring. My favourite way to solve that….make the photo black & white! So if you take a bathroom selfie that you like but you don’t like the colour tone of the light…try experimenting with making it into black and white!

Walls

So, in a bathroom, I love taking self-portraits standing against the wall. There are a few reasons for this…the most important is that if I stand in the middle of the room and take the photo there is a high risk of having my backdrop be either my tub (and the handwashing hanging from the railing), the sink or eek…the toilet! I don’t know about you…but I don’t really want any of those things in the photo!

When we take our photo against the wall (or standing a step or two away from it), it focuses the image on us and not the context of our bathroom! It makes it as though it could be taken anywhere!

Privacy

Its true! For many of us, the bathroom might be the one place where it is totally okay to close the door and be alone for a bit! When I started taking self-portraits, this was the place where it was easiest to take them.

So yes, claim space…take some time in your bathroom to give this a try!

To tell you the truth, the bathroom is also the place I go when I’m having a rough day and need to take a self-portrait to invite myself to feel seen in the truth of the emotions I’m experiencing. Privacy can also be really important for that. Sometimes when we are crying or having a rough day, it can be really powerful to take a self-portrait and send ourselves compassion.

So yes, the privacy of taking self-portraits in our bathroom can be useful for getting dressed up and feeling sassy but also for just sharing the truth of our experience with ourselves, through our camera.

Props

The other great thing about taking photos in our bathroom is that there is often a whole lot accessible nearby to use as props. Perhaps you might put on your favourite necklace you have hanging on a jewelry rack in your bathroom? Or that scarf you have nearby? Or play around with makeup (I’m such a late bloomer to make-up…sometimes it really does feel like when I put it on I’m accessing my inner 16 year old ‘playing with makeup’ and that kinda makes me happy)!

So yes, access the props, jewelry, things you can adorn yourself with, maybe your closet nearby? You can even explore dressing up like an alter ego of yourself & get into ‘costume’! Invite play & props into your self-portrait experimentation!

The Mirror

As you can see from my early mirror self-portraits above, I started by holding up the camera and shooting into the mirror. After experimenting with some of the tips I’m going to share with you, I found that I loved the photos even more if the camera wasn’t in it and there are a few great ways to do that!

Now, this was a few years ago so there weren’t front facing cameras on iPhones! The mirror helped me to learn how to frame a photo.

Here’s how:

By standing as though I was looking in the mirror and holding up my phone as though I as going to take a self-portrait….I could look in the mirror and see the back of my camera.

This also works when I use my DSLR. I can hold it with the lens aimed at me but I can look behind it at the mirror and see how the photo was framed.

Of course if you have a front-facing camera or a DSLR with a viewfinder that you can flip around you may not need it…but it was a great way to get a sense of whether or not where I was holding my camera would work without having to check the photo each time.

Here are a few other ways of using the mirror to take our self-portrait:

The mirror can also come in handy as we can aim our camera into it by holding it in our hands facing the mirror. This is often one of the first self-portraits people take. Its an awesome one to try!
Get close to the mirror (as in close enough for there to be two of you…you and your reflection) and have fun with that!
Hold the camera at about chest height and try shooting into the mirror but not getting the camera in the photo…its a great way to learn about angles we can shoot at!
Mirror photos are so fun to take in bathrooms that aren’t your own (like the ones above) and can be a way to take a quick and inconspicuous self-portrait during your day!

Apps & Filters

As you might notice, a lot of these example photos are taken with the same filters! The final tip I have for you is to explore what different Apps & Filters work best for you and the light in your bathroom!

My favourite for this purpose is Hipstamatic. There is something about a number of their film/lens combinations that seems to work well with bathroom photos! The challenge with Hipstamatic is that it actually doesn’t work with your front facing camera! So you have to go old-school and shoot your self-portraits without looking into the screen. Be sure to try that trick I mentioned about using the mirror to see what is in the viewfinder!

So if you have tried taking a self-portrait in your bathroom with that filter you love for outdoor photos and it made things look too dark or just didn’t inspire you…well the fun is about to begin because you get to explore finding a new favourite app or filter for you bathroom photos!

You might also try using the basic camera in your phone (or perhaps you are using a DSLR) and experiment with processing the photos afterwards. I often find that the photos that we might not feel to inspired by are often the perfect ones to get really experimental with and turn into a work of art via an App or by playing around in Picmonkey!

Do you have any questions? Please don’t hesitate to leave a comment and ask!

As well…if taking self-portraits indoors is right for you right now, give these a try! If you do experiment with taking a bathroom selfie today, please do tag it with #beyourownbeloved so I can cheer you on!

If these tips have you craving to experiment even more with turning the camera on yourself, come join me for the upcoming session of Be Your Own Beloved and explore seeing yourself with compassion through self-portraiture!