Challenge 3: Tell a Story

Creative Challenge 3: Tell a Story

This week my challenge was to tell a story with a single image. As a scrapbooker I have always tried to tell a story with my photos so I really struggled with what I wanted to say that I hadn't already tried to say with my photos. My daughter was home over the holidays and had me watching the One Direction "This Is Us" DVD and some of their recent music videos. Their video for Story of My Life, especially the behind the scenes version, stuck with me. Thinking of how much family photos mean along with knowing how rarely I let myself be photographed made me feel I have been preserving a very lopsided family history for my daughter. I know exactly why I'm not in photos - I'm terribly uncomfortable in front of the camera with my fear being evident is almost every adult photo of me. This week I decided I needed to figure out how to be comfortable in front of the camera as both a way to face my fear and to be able to help the people I photograph who may be feeling just as uncomfortable. As with my other creative challenges I also challenged myself technically this week. I decided to set up two medium Apollo softboxes with my Nikon Speedlights. I recently bought the Odin Phottix flash triggers and decided it was time to figure out how to use them. My grids for my softboxes had arrived this week and I wanted to try adding that additional control of my light so I put grids on both softboxes for this challenge. After setting up my lighting it was time to try to get a photo of me that I liked, but that also told my story. I found that the more I applied posing techniques and reminded myself to relax my shoulders, hands, mouth, etc... the more relaxed I started to look in the photos. After looking through all of the photos this is the one I chose to tell the story of my fear of being on this side of the camera.

When I was done taking photos my dogs, who had been crying on the other side of the door, finally got to come in the room so I took a few more photos with them. Suddenly I wasn't thinking about whether the light was aimed into the direction of my hair part or which side of my face is my best side. I was simply enjoying the moment with my dogs. I think I have another goal this year - to learn to be this comfortable in front of the camera without a dog in my arms.

Until next week stay creative and keep challenging yourself!