Some of these photos will look familiar to those of you who follow my Instagram—I posted them there back in November shortly after this shoot. I had a few that hadn’t been shared yet though, and since launching the blog, decided to include the whole set here with a little update.
I shot this set of self-portraits on an expired roll of Kodak Max 400 and my dad’s old point & shoot at Bryan Park in late October. Expired film often comes out a bit dark, and while I liked the original scanned images, I made some edits using VSCO to bring out the color a bit more. It’s rare for me to edit film photos post-production, meaning I don’t tweak things like color saturation or contrast beyond the basic corrections the lab makes when they scan the images. I shoot film in part because I like the look of film, and I like the element of imperfection and unpredictability that comes with not being able to see your images in the moment they are created and make adjustments to your camera settings if something isn’t quite ideal, like you would on a digital camera.
I like using my dad’s old point & shoot for self-portraits because it has a self-timer, and while my SLRs take a bit sharper images, I have to use a manual cable release to make self-portraits on those. The cable release I use is basically a long, narrow rubber tube with a little attachment on one end that screws into my shutter button (the button you press to take the photo) and a hollow rubber ball on the other end. I squeeze the rubber ball when I’m ready to take the shot, and a gust of air travels through the tube and presses the shutter button for me. There are a few limitations to using the cable release—I have to be within 20 feet of my camera because that’s how long the tube is, and I have to consider the fact that I am going to be either squeezing the ball in my hand or pressing on it with my foot when posing myself. It’s doable, and worth the trouble, and I shoot the majority of my self-portraits this way, but on a day like this one when I just wanted to wander into the woods and snap a few hassle-free photos of myself, the self-timer comes in handy.
I hope y’all like to hear a little bit about my process, and if there’s anything I do that you’d like more insight into, please leave a comment and let me know. When I started this blog, I knew I wanted to move away from Instagram being my primary platform for photo sharing, and I wanted more freedom in how I share my work. I didn’t really have a plan in terms of how the work would be contextualized with the text in these posts, but I’ve found I like to share the process behind the photographs. I like talking about how things came together, what happened the day the photos were made, my approach to photography and technique and style. It’s nice to have the space here to do that.
Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.