Getting to Know my Face

As a photographer I have lots of up-close-and-personal experiences with people, and specifically their faces. It's hard to take hundreds of photos of a person and spend hours and hours staring at their face during post-processing and not end having developed a familiarity. I think this has made me appreciate the uniqueness and individuality of a lot of people around me. I actually like to look at people's faces. It's really cool.

But there's one person that I had never done this with: myself.

I'm not really the type of person to spend a lot of time getting acquainted with my face (or myself in general) in the mirror. I don't really do my hair. I wear very, very minimal makeup. So I don't have to look in the mirror to do those things. When I'm brushing my teeth or putting in my lenses is probably about the most time I spend looking at my face in the mirror. (I do have a habit of taking really unattractive selfies when I'm bored, but that just makes me laugh at my face.) In any case, I don't really ever LOOK at my face, and when I do, I'm probably nit-picking my hair or skin.

So it was very weird for me to take my own senior photos. When I was planning it, I was contemplating the reasons it would be uncomfortable. I had dabbled briefly in self-portraiture, mostly in my backyard, but I had a pretty good idea of how it would be different. Things went through my mind that would be kind of awkward, especially if someone saw me, like sitting alone across from a tripod and posing with no one really there to take the photo. But something happened that I didn't expect. I had to get acquainted--really acquainted--with my very own face, and my body also. I had to look at photos of myself. I had to analyze them like I do with the other people I photograph. It was weird and uncomfortable and awkward and it felt really different than I anticipated it to feel.

I never look at photos that I've taken of other people and judge them as harshly as I do photos of myself, so then I tried to approach it with an attitude of these-aren't-photos-of-me. This whole idea caused me to look at myself in a new way. 

I looked at my imperfections like I do with other people: they're cute, and they make me who I am. I started to appreciate the things about myself that I didn't really like before.

I remember looking at this photo and thinking, even though my obnoxious upper lip was doing the weird thing that it does when I smile, I looked really good. I looked really me. 

A lot of the photos are silly or slightly out of focus or just me being weird, but they really represent my personality well, and I actually like them. I like photos of myself. This is what I try to get other people to do all the time and I've finally gotten myself to do it too.

(ta-da! the end.)