One of the project assignments as part of my NCFE photography course has been to create a self-portrait. Personally, I’m finding this to be a really difficult assignment, so I thought I’d write a bit about my thoughts on self-portraits.

First of all, I’m not a fan of self-portraits at all. I understand that they’re a form that makes use of a cheap model (oneself) who doesn’t charge by the hour, and who can sit for hundreds of photos (paintings, whatever) without complaint. Some self-portraits are fascinating – I’m thinking particularly of the M C Escher “Self Portrait in a Spherical Mirror” or the series done by Robert Mapplethorpe of himself every year as HIV and AIDS affected his body and face – but for the most part I just find them to be self-indulgent.  It’s fair to say they’re far from my favourite genre of artworks.

From a commercial point of view, I also don’t get self-portraits. If you want to sell photos, believe me, they’re not likely to be ones of yourself. Sure, they’re great to hang in a gallery once you’re dead – but they’re not going to sell while you’re still alive. (unless you’re particularly well thought-of and/or pretty)  In fact I’d say that commercially you’re going to be able to sell pretty much anything except self-portraits. Someone out there will like what you’ve done, but only friends and family might be interested in a picture of yourself.

The final problem is more to do with my own self-image – I don’t like being in photos, I don’t like the way I look, never have and likely never will. So for me a self-portrait is pretty much torture incarnate as well – and I’ll likely never find one that I’m happy with. Which makes for a further issue when it comes to the assignment.

So I don’t know, I just have a problem with self-portraits.

I’ve recently started taking the NCFE Level 2 qualification in digital photography, which is making life a bit more interesting.

It’s a thirty-week course, where the first ten weeks are involved in learning more about technical aspects of photography, the second ten weeks will be based around using Photoshop (Or in this case Photoshop Elements – which I don’t mind, as not everyone has access to CS3…) and then the final ten weeks will be spent assembling a project and/or portfolio.

I’m hoping that the course will help me on some of the technical knowledge – for example, I understand about Depth of Field and Apertures, but I don’t know why an f number is called that, or how they work. By which I mean that I know f/2.0 is a wide-open large aperture, and f/32 is tiny, but I don’t know why a larger number means a smaller aperture (And I never remember that rule, either) or precisely how it affects a photo.

Additionally, the course should help give me some more motivation, a bit of drive to get out and take more photos. It certainly seems to be doing so, as I’ve been out (allbeit briefly) the last two weeks in order to take the necessary photos for the assignments.

And that has to be a good thing.