P52: Self-portrait

I am participating in a project over at My 3 Boybarians called Project52 (P52)  which stands for “1 photo each week for a year.”  There is an assigned theme each week and I try to take the best photo I can related to that theme.  Here is my attempt this week!

So we all love having pictures taken of ourselves, right??  Yeah, usually not.    So needless to say I wasn’t too excited about the theme for this week: self-portrait.

I had been thinking all week how I was going to do a self portrait – with a timer,  in a mirror??  And I just wasn’t too crazy about the whole idea.  I really wanted to try to do an outside picture, but the forecast called for rain Thursday and Friday which were the only days I had to do it.  So with that excuse and about 10 others that we all use (don’t know what to wear, need to lose weight, my hair doesn’t look good, how to do it, where to do it, not enough time, etc.),  I had pretty much  decided on Thursday I was going to skip this week and just pick it up next week.

Then my friend Laine posted her picture – and it was gorgeous!!  (Why do friends have to keep you accountable like that?? )  And Friday didn’t bring any rain.  It was a gorgeous-blue skies-60 degrees in January kind of day.  And my nieces were over and wanted to go outside to play …all my excuses weren’t really working anymore. 

So I grabbed my camera and lugged this mirror outside to my backyard.  (I got the mirror at a yard sale for $8, spray-painted it, and used it over my mantel until I replaced it with the white oval one I am using right now).

Once I got started I really enjoyed it.  The lighting and colors were perfect and I took a TON of pictures!  It was so much fun!

I had fun experimenting and trying different poses and techniques.

Leave the frame of the mirror in the shot… (this picture focuses on the frame, not me)

Or do a zoomed in picture of just me…

Camera at my face…

Or next to my face…

So many options!  I will definitely be trying this mirror-outside method again!

I even convinced my nieces to jump in for some of the fun! 

I absolutely LOVE this picture of me and my oldest niece!  It will be framed in my house for sure!   She can be hard to capture with a true natural smile and this one is just perfect of her! 🙂

The youngest niece has been a little camera shy this week, but I grabbed her for a quick shot anyways.

So I picked the very first picture in the post as my entry for this week since it showed my face.  My favorite one without showing my face was the next one down.  And my third favorite was the full length one with the camera in front of my face.   

Honestly though, my favorite of the day is the one with my oldest niece!  The photo shoot was worth it just to capture that one shot – priceless!     And I will remember these pictures when next week rolls around or later on during year and I don’t like the theme or I don’t want to do it. :)  Look what I could have missed! :)   Hmmmm… sounds like a pretty good life lesson too 🙂

Which one is your favorite?  😉

Have you ever tried to take a self portraits of yourself, maybe in a mirror?    Try it, you might find it fun too! 😉

{cj}