Kamps - Shooting yourself self portraits with attitude

Haje Jan Kamps

Shooting
Yourself

Self-Portraits with Attitude

I L E X

Turn your camera on the worlds most fascinating and attractive model yourself! Take part in the new wave of expressive self-portraiture, enjoy unlimited creative control over your subject, and reveal your hidden side with confidence!

Hundreds of inspiring self-portraits from creative photo stars.

Go on location, add props, get dressed up, or even bare it all dozens of styles are explored.

Get inspired and gain the confidence to visually tell your own unique story.

With simple post-production techniques to add style and amazing surreal effects.

Quick contents

Table of Contents

Innocence is easily faked, as were going to explore in this chapter. Its all about the kittens, photos-from-above, and pigtails.

Whether you use a desk lamp, a computer screen or professional photo lighting to achieve extra drama, this is the chapter for you!

Editing your self-portraits? Totally fair game! Its all about making yourself look hotter.

Any photograph is about telling a story, but you can push that so much further with self-portraiture. Bring on the recreations, the pretending-to-be-someone-youre-not, and the fairytales!

Make a bit of effort with period costumes or just the fanciest outfit you have in the closet.

This chapter is all about sexy. If youve ever wanted to have a go at nude portraiture but werent sure where to begin, start here. And the best bit? You dont even have to get naked!

Most self-portraits are taken in a bedroom/living room. This chapter highlights the people who stand out from the crowd by taking it outsideor inside, for that matter.

Did you know that sharks die if they stop moving? I know a few people like that, too. Self-portraits arent limited to photos of people standing still, and heres the best of the movers and shakers, including those who run away from their cameras!

You didnt think this was going to be all about people, did you? Of course notpeople have been posing with props since some clever person invented the paint brush. This chapter takes some of the most eye-catching props and displays them.

If you havent got a twin, dont despairthere are plenty of people who have armed themselves with digital editing in order to make themselves a mirror-sibling. This chapter shows off the best of the best, and shows you how.

Whether its a Lomo, a Holga, or an Olympus Trip with ancient film loaded, its all about delicious lo-fi photos. It doesnt matter if youre doing it for real or faking itits the final result that matters!

Introduction

When I first started to explore photography, I realized that it was going to take me on an exciting journey of discovery. Not only was I learning things about physics, mechanics, and optics that I had never even thought about before, but I was also starting to see the world in a completely different way.

When you start seeing the world differently, you also start seeing yourself in a new way. I think this is why self-portraiture is such an incredibly exciting genre.

Ive often noted that if photography is the art of seeing, then self-portraiture is the art of seeing yourself. I hope that this book can help guide and inspire you in the right direction.

Good luck!

Your faithful author with a sketchy-looking mustache and a ukulele he doesnt know how to play.

A touch of innocence

Self-portraiture is a magical world where truth and fantasy meet. There is something inherently true about the expression the camera never lies, and yet you only have to pick up a fashion magazine to appreciate quite how much a photograph can, indeed, distort the truth.

The image you project in your self-portraiture is entirely one of your own design. This can sound a little scaryor it could be an opportunity to embrace!

When we point the camera at ourselves, we have the same scope to stretch and distort the truth. We choose what facial expressions to adopt, our clothes, and the environment were photographed in. Its one of my favorite reasons for relishing self-portraitureyou get to be an actor in your own one-person production!

You can express many powerful emotions using self-portraiture. When youre photographing yourself, its an extra bonus that the model never gets bored before the photographer does!

Photo by Bryce Fields

Keep Practicing

Turn on your television to a random channel and see if you can determine the general mood you are presented with. Are the people on the screen angry? Scared? Excited? Serious? Take a self-portrait that reflects their moodand dont give up until you succeed!

With a little help from your friends

Photography is a curious medium; it can capture a specific moment in time, so there is an expectation that the camera never lies and only records the truth. While that theory of photography should be true for photojournalists or police officers who have the grizzly task of recording scenes of crimes and gathering evidence, it isnt always the case for everyone taking pictures.

Theres a whole other side to photography: the creative, artistic one that isnt so much a re-creation of a slice of reality, but is a representation of the photographers vision. As you are reading this book I am going to take it that this is what you are after.

When you take a photograph, youre re-creatingor even constructingan image in the way that you see the scene and want the final product to look. A photograph is your interpretation of what you can see, and as we all see things differently, its pretty hard to say that youre right or wrong.

Some photos are easy to get with a Self-Timer. For others, its better to ask a friend for help.

Photo by Lucy Tindall

(Lucy Tindall Photography)

If you can envisage a photograph of a busy market scene, full of people and color and animation, you might be drawn to the interaction between two people in the foreground, while I on the other hand am more focused on the interplay of the different colors of the goods for sale. Neither interpretation is wrong; theyre different, and theyre the product of the different way that we all see things.