Photo Assignment # 3 - Self Portriats

I had two assignments due Monday night, so I'm running a bit behind here. Assignment number three was "self portraits". This was by far the least favorite assignment of everyone in class. I, personally, hate, with a passion, being in front of the camera. Hate it. However, for this assignment we were only required to have our face in one picture. The rest of the pictures were supposed to show us....our personalities, reflections of ourselves. Still, we hated the assignment. It wasn't that hard for me to come up with pictures that reflect "me".


Photograph #1: My Work Life. How can work not be part of me when I am here, Monday through Friday from 8 AM to 4:30 PM? My desk says a lot about me (someone in class pointed out how clean it was - duh!) and it should since I spend so much time here. You can see many photos of the dogs on the wall and on my desktop....there is a latte and a water bottle, because I always have to have something to drink. I was introduced to the idea of dual monitors when I started here (in July of 2007) and I love this feature - I get so much more work done having a 20" flat panel hooked up to my laptop. Lastly you can see that I have a Mac keyboard attached to a Gateway PC....a little odd, but Mac got their keyboards right - the keys are super thin which is great!


Photograph #2: My Knitting Life. This one should be clear to everyone who reads this blog. I'm a knitter and it is a big part of my life. It is how I relax, reach out to other people, and how I'm productively lazy.


Photograph #3: The loves of my life. How can I post a picture of myself and not include my husband and the dogs? These three keep me sane (okay, Shane keeps me sane and the puppies sometimes drive me insane with their barking) but you know what I mean. Shane & I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary this month, Sparky was three years old in January and Skeeter will be 3 years old in June....how fitting that the picture is #3 and there are 3 things in the picture that I love most in this world.


Photograph #4: Me, sort of. I was actually really worried about what the professor would think of this picture but I was so surprised how he reacted. He called this "a picture of a person without the person" and it was one of two shadow pictures in a class of 18. I took this picture early one morning (around 7:50 AM) outside of work (yes, I've taken to carrying my camera with me). The sun was just right to make a great shadow. I wanted to hold the camera off to the side and have that be part of the picture in the shadow but those attempts were unsuccessful - this shot was a "test shot" but was the best one. The reason why this shows me is that, again, I don't like to be in front of the camera....or in front of anything. I hate being the center of attention. I prefer to work in the background (which is why I like programming), to just blend in, go unnoticed.


Photograph #5: The dreaded face shot. This wast the hardest part of the assignment. Part of it was because I don't shoot with a point & shoot camera so holding my dSLR in one hand to take my own picture was tough....I couldn't look through the view finder to line up the shot, it was a lot of trial and error. I tried mirror shots but none of those worked. Okay, some of them worked but you know why I didn't like them? Because I'm IN the picture. Yup. Now, don't get me wrong, there are pictures of me that I like, but someone is always in those pictures with me and the pictures hold a lot of sentimental value and bring back great memories, so I can deal with "me". When I saw this picture I knew it was the "one" because I'm in it, but I'm not. I was afraid the professor wouldn't like it because it isn't all of my face however, once again, he really liked it. He said he could feel the angst of me not wanting to be in the picture.

Assignment four was "macro" or close up photograph, but I'll post those pictures another day!

Don't forget to enter my caption contest! I've had some great entries so far!