Jean Hutter - Digital Views: September 2018

What’s worse than seeing yourself in a photo - maybe hearing you voice in a recording or that number on the scale - well for me all three are horrific. If you told me a year ago I would even consider taking a selfie I would have laughed and laughed hard!

I tend to make a lot of people based images and I like taking my own photos. I have photoed friends, family and occasionally sneaked a pic of a stranger here and there. But sometimes your are the best or only model.

I purchased a holder for my iPhone so I could mount it to a tripod that I already had and a remote shutter release. I dress up and take photos in my house - in a hallway in front of a neutral colored wall - and most are awful. I don’t care, as I am not going for that perfect shot - I am going to alter the picture a lot, sometimes even cutting off my head.

So let’s talk about “artistic” selfies, not photographs. Remember you are making art not doing a portrait shoot and for me the messier the better - blur, lots of texture and other junk are your friends.

Lets start with taking a few shots of ourselves - even the normal selfie is fine. If this is absolutely out, then maybe some pics of someone else because the final image is not a depiction of an actual person. Take all kinds of pictures - close ups, head shots, full body, sitting, standing, posing - just take a lot of photos. Maybe try a photo of your shadow remember you look tall and thin in shadow pics, a win-win!

If you do not have a tripod and a remote have someone else take your pictures or photo someone else - you want images to choose from and to work with. If they are out of focus or just plain awful who cares - mine usually are!

Now for the actual image making part - I will call these images “artistic selfies” for the sake of our discussion. When I start doing one of these images I am thinking mood and interesting composition - something people will look at and think art not photo.

I will position the head off center, cut off the top of the head or side of the face, position the subject high or low on the canvas space. I may zero in very close and just show part of the face or eyes only. I may cover the face or head all together. If I am working with more of a figurative piece, add a hat or glasses. Be creative. How about an upside down or sideways person. At this point I am just working to get positioning for my subject and starting to work on an idea or a composition. For me this would be in iColorama, Procreate or SuperImposeX but any app that has layers would work. I start with a size and shape in mind - square or rectangle either white or dark BG with the selfie layered on top. Right now I am not interested in masking out anything, just positing. I start with the selfie layer - enlarging, moving it around, moving it off the canvas, making it smaller - just moving towards something I find interesting. If something needs to be masked out or removed I do it here after I establish my position.

Once I get the overall position of the face/figure I go into Touch/Retouch to fix any areas that need it. Better that plastic surgery!!!! Now I start thinking if I want to add any other objects to my image - and I usually do since I am the queen of stuff!!

Next I start running my image thru a lot of different apps and saving the results - nothing is too crazy here, you never know what you might get. Don’t think of these images as a finished piece just steps.

I finally start to evaluate what I images I have saved and start to layer them over my original keeping parts of some, masking and adjusting. I start adding other stuff maybe lettering, textures or objects - not really thinking too much about it yet. Sometimes I like to draw and paint on top of the image, for me in Procreate. Always on a separate layer.

I keep working in this way until I get something I like. I may still make other images from my saved work. I may take one of the images I particularly like and start a new image from it maybe moving in closer, moving out or cropping - all these images can be reused.