Oh, February

Oh, February.

You may be short, but like many other short things (Napoleon? Childbirth, in the scheme of things? A dodgeball to the face?) you sure do pack a punch. Here in the Midwest, you are devoid of color. You're mostly cold (today excepting, which was a weird 61 degrees). Overall, you just plain suck the life out of me.

I'm trying not to let you get to me. I'm a positive person! But your dreariness is totally bringing me down. Here you are trying to lull me into thinking there will never be flowers again, or bare skin, or a day so hot I almost think fondly of you. You're almost winning. Almost.

Love That Belly?

The story I have about my stomach starts with a poem. 

I was eight, brown hair and green eyes

Long limbs, drops of chlorinated water beading on my tanned skin

Smiling in the sunlit afternoon

She was nine, black hair and pursed lips

Large eyes, studying my swimsuit clad form

Smiling in the sunlit afternoon 

"You have a potbelly" 

I was eight, brown hair and green eyes

Suddenly aware 

That my body 

Was something to be ashamed of

Some lessons only take a moment to learn 

But a lifetime to overcome

The story I have about my stomach continues with a photograph in which I force myself to expose it. 

I expose it with the hopes that somehow this gesture will open up something in me that will allow me to love it.

Love it for growing three beautiful babies. Love it for being a sacred space that holds my wisdom as significant and important. 

Love it despite the fact that I find it lumpy, bumpy, and ugly. 

That eight year old girl needs me to work harder at being kind to this belly of mine. I owe that to her. 

To us. 

The story I have about my stomach is not yet over, but now I know that it is up to me to write the ending. 

Movement

The next assignment in my photography class is movement. All of the assignments are conceptual--which makes it all the more interesting. To me that means I can shoot things that are moving (I can freeze the action or show the movement with a longer shutter speed) or even shoot things that convey movement, like a winding road or an escalator or... I don't know.

(I like not knowing sometimes.)

What I do know is that I am afraid of this assignment. It's kind of out of my comfort zone. It's not where I think I shine, but I'm so intrigued by other photos I see that utilize movement. I am in this class to push my own boundaries, after all. So push I will.

I thought about this and how I could apply it to a self portrait this week. I wanted ethereal, ghostly, not-quite-there and yet there. I feel so half here this week, so pulled into and out of the "normal" world. Can I be firmly planted here and yet half in the shadows? Can I exist here and not turn into vapor, drift away like a summer fog?

I'm working on that. But for today shadows, movement, a little light.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby

Look, it's a full body shot. I know it's not a close up, but cut me some slack. I've come a long way from last year when I would never dare show all of my body. But that's not what this post is about.
I don't think. I actually never really know what these posts are going to be about until I start writing them.

I didn't have my tripod with me today when this was shot, so I set it up and asked my trusty assistant, also known as my 13 year old son, to actually take it for me. We took some with me facing away and some with me looking at the camera. He decided he should change the exposure on a few, so maybe this is really a collaborative effort? Is that allowed on a blog of self-portraits?

But like Lisa and I always tell each other. It's our blog and we can do what we like with it.

I love going out to shoot with my son, he is usually enthusiastic about it and he often points things out that he finds interesting. He sees things differently, of course, and that is always fun for me.

We ventured out to the Pointe Mouille Game Preserve, a favorite spot. It's wide open and huge, it looks different every time I see it. Today it was muddy with lots of cloud cover. Not what I had hoped for, but we made do. I'm finding that comes easier to me now than it used to. Loosening expectations, not lowering them, but releasing the grip I have on them sometimes. I see myself in a place I adore, with a person I love; fully at ease with who I am and what I'm doing. It's taken a little while for me to get to this place of acceptance and understanding. I like it here. I think I'll stay.

On selfies and what I reveal by not revealing

I have this app called Tin Type. I like to use it on photos of myself. It brightens my eyes and smooths everything out, makes my skin look smooth. Almost unnatural if you want the truth. 

In addition to editing my selfies, I have a few tricks for making myself look better when I take the photo. The phone is held up and I tilt my head just so, to get my good angles. A slight smile, but not big, lest I show the chips in my teeth. It can be quite a process. 

Never shoot from below! 

Is it lying when I post these edited and posed shots of myself? Is it vanity? Or just a tweak to enhance my good points?  I suppose it's any and all of those. 

Today for your perusal, I give you three versions of a selfie. 

One posed, but not edited. 

One posed and edited. 

One not edited and not so posed.

Which one is the real Jane? A photo cannot show the true essence of a person. It can come close sometimes, but it can't really capture who that person is, what they believe, who they love, and who loves them. What I am willing to reveal in any self portrait says more about me than the actual photo. 

Sometimes I think I share more of myself in the written part of this blog than in the photos. I'd like to change that for the next few entires. There are not many left before I hit 52! We'll see if my ego will step aside and allow me to really dig deep and show a side of me that I have yet to reveal. Stay tuned. 

Imagination

I am in a photography class. It just started, and we've only met once so far. We won't be doing anything like this, but already I realize I'm going to have to challenge myself in this class. I have to go back to the way I felt when I first started shooting. Open, experimental, unafraid to try things, unafraid to do things the "wrong" way. I've got to approach things with wonder again.

Jane does these gorgeous double exposures, and every time I attempt to create one I get bogged down in the details. It's too much work. The technicality of it scares me. So I work on creating one and then I quit in frustration. But I don't want those things to get in the way.

I took the time today to figure out how to merge a self portrait with a film image I took in early December which just came back from the processor. The options are limitless and it's a very creative (if challenging) process. It's like editing your writing... when do you stop? There is no perfect--there are only creative choices. I stopped here. And I really like it.

49

I turned 49 yesterday. I don't have issues with this (should I?), the last year I will have in my 40s. It has been a decent decade and I kind of hope I send it out with a bang.

I did have some angst leading up to my birthday, however. Midway through my mother's 49th year she learned she had breast cancer, which she died from at only 52. I know I'm not my mother--I don't have her circumstances (a previous and nearly fatal cancer at 24, pesticide exposure in her youth) but her experience haunts me. I guess I'm just realizing at this age that I think I have so much more time. Time to create art, time to learn more, time to watch my kids develop as adults, time to further my career. I wonder if after my mom's first cancer, she might have been living on tenterhooks, wondering when the other shoe would drop. I'll never know, though.

But here I am at 49 and I will choose to continue living like I've got another decade at least to live with abandon. Maybe the decade after that I'll get a little more serious and start getting my affairs in order. Or maybe not.

But also... I am angry at myself for not keeping up with this project. I started thinking too much about the images, my plans for the images, my failings at trying new techniques. I've got to let that go and finish this up. While we planned on 52 images in a year, I got uptight about deadlines. Jane says this is our project and we make up the rules--so if 52 images takes longer than a calendar year, then that's what we do. I like this. I love this, in fact. So I'm going to shed my issues about not doing this "right" and focus on creating some images that continue to be reflective of me and the 49 years I've got under my belt.