May 11th - Pin Up Grrl?
Had a few odd quiet moments with my self, my creative drive, my ego and my image.
barbie had fallen asleep and it was quiet in the apartment, and I felt restless.
I need to start recruiting other people to photograph... I wanted to make pictures, and I had to rely on myself as photographer, myself as model, and because I don't have a tripod/timer for the good camera, I had to make use of the crappy little web cam as my camera. So.. it was a lot of work. I basically cleared the floor between the computer desk and the bed edge, threw back the blankets, slipped on my negligee, set the timer for every 15 seconds, and just slipped from pose to pose.
The results are some slightly fuzzy warmly lit very very simple soft core pics of me... and when I looked at them I thought they had that hint of feeling like old pin-up pics from the past. Though I don't aspire to compare that closely to those glamour girls. For one.. they didn't have to orchestrate every single picture so that their well endowed belly rolls didn't clutter up the image. <smile>
It was also hot in the loft because I was doing laundry, and the washer and dryer are literally in the corner of the room less than 6 feet away, and that dryer pumps out a lot of heat.
I had to stop because I was getting physically tired and over heated.
Though I really thoroughly enjoy doing them.
Do I feel sexy when I pose.. yes, do I feel beautiful... yes.... well, yes, but I focus a lot eliminating the negatives, and focus mostly from a very critical photographic and arts point of view. Where the shadows fall, how the angles are, composition, lines... I also feel like I make myself look better than I do in 'real life' though, I have had people surprisingly tell me just the opposite.
People make a lot of assumptions about other people, and people make a lot of assumptions about me, based on what I look like, what I do for a living, what I post and write here. How I must feel about myself, how I must feel about other people. What type of life I lead.
Sometimes it's weird to hear the feedback, people who place me on a pedestal, who want to worship me, and obsess over me. People who do just the opposite and condemn and despise what I do. People who write and tell me how perfect, beautiful, amazing, clever I am and how there is art and realism in what I do. Then people who write and tell me how fake things look, or how I look miserable all the time, or that I'm too fat to do this and I could be a real success if I only lost 50 pounds, or that I need to find God. etc, etc. The highest praise, to the nastiest slams, and lots in between.
Though lately I haven't gotten all the much mail really. Or maybe I've just become accustomed after doing this for a year, and it has just been over a year now, to the steady stream.
It's interesting to look at the pictures once they're done, and I'm cropping and editing, usually I adjust the contrast and brightness, change the color a bit... darken or lighten, make it more red, make it more blue.. and then crop the image tighter, but these ones I had the camera and light set to the color and brightness and contrast the way I like it, and all I did was just crop the image edges down, and that was it.
The other thing that stuck out for me when I was going through the pictures, was a shift in my perception of myself as I looked at some of them. That I'm starting to look my age. I look at the pictures.. and I see a woman, and not a grrl... which is weird, because I feel caught between those worlds right now. Or maybe, I'm just a part of both of those worlds. What does it mean really, to be a girl, or to be a woman....
Maybe it's just the time of year, a month till my birthday, making me aware of the passage of time. The passage of my life, the years and days changing me, as I evolve and grow. Who I am, different from last year, different from yesterday. Who will I be tomorrow, next year, 5 years from now.. or 10, or 50.
What will those pictures show? What words will slip from those fingers. Will it keep on improving? I hope so. I hope some of it at least.. I know with change there are always losses as well as gains. That's the nature of change really.
XO
Katt