I almost hate to admit it, but at risk of sounding self-absorbed and vain, and I decided it's time to come out of the closet and reveal one of my favourite and so-far, kind of well-kept secrets.
I like taking photos of myself.
I would almost use the term 'camwhore' on myself...but after reading Wikipedia's definition of the term as "...an individual who performs sexual services on the Internet with webcam software in exchange for money, goods, or attention..." or "...individuals who post pictures or videos of themselves on the Internet to gain attention...", as well as some of Urban Dictionary's definitions, including "Girls who are amateurs at posing slutty and seductive... " I realized that my idea of a camwhore (a person who likes taking pictures of herself/himself) is rather mild compared to the actual definitions. I don't do slutty pics or try to make money of my own pics...
I'm just of those people who have more or less mastered the art of taking multiple pics of myself when I think I'm better looking than usual... either using a tripod and the camera's timer, or through the more challenging method of single handedly aiming the camera at myself at the right angle. This usually results in many failed photos where I end up looking more like disproportionate whale than anything else... but after many round of shots, eventually I do get some nice ones (and thank God for digital cameras which allow me to delete all the lousy pics easily). For the most part, I store my 'photo shoot' collections hidden away in the deep abyss of my computer's hard drive, and I've limited the sharing of my best self-taken pics to my friends on Facebook.
So I'm not a full-blown camwhore yet! Yay! I would guess I am simply the much milder version of the camwhorer... i.e. the self-photographer.
Now most people would consider a love of taking pictures of oneself as a sign of self-absorption or lameness. Especially when you starting snapping away at yourself in public, with everyone else looking at you in a bemused manner. To a certain extent, I would agree that the frequency of self-photography one partakes in is a pretty good indicator of a person's level of vanity, but I don't think all people who like taking pics of themselves are definitely self-absorbed, and for some, it is simply a indicator of a healthy level of confidence and liking to look good. Besides, I've also learned that the ability to takes photos of yourself can be quite an art which offers a numbers of benefits and advantages.
Therefore I present to you, my Top Eight Reasons Why Self-Photography is Awesome (because I was too lazy to come up with two more reasons to make a top ten...):
8) You have nice looking photos of yourself
Most obvious reason of course. When other people take photos of you, they don't really care if your yawning with your mouth big enough for a fly to go in. Or that you were reacting to a friend's bug eating story resulting in your face being contorted into a retarded look. Or even if you ARE paying attention, your hair could be messy, or your shirt button accidentally popped open, or you had veggies in between your teeth. Self-photography allows you the freedom to retake your photos at any time to get the perfect shot. You'll still have to worry about getting your friends to delete that yucky pic of yours though.
7) You don't need to find someone to hold the camera
The tripod holds your camera for you, or you do it yourself. Even armed with only a cute little mini tripod (I don't have a big one), you can still be creative and stand it on a table or anything else you can find. And you don't have to worry if the random stranger you asked to take photos of you with your buddies will up and run away with your RM2000 DLSR while you're busy posing.
6)You don't need to worry about people who take really bad photos
For example, you're on a holiday, you want a nice pic of you with the full blown scenery... but the person taking photos of you either aims too high (most of body gets chopped off), zooms in too much (can see only you but not the scenery) and no matter how you describe your ideal photo to him/her, the person just can't get it right. No problem. Pull out your tripod, find a good place to stand it, set your camera on timer and snap away to the perfect shot.
5) You don't waste the photographer's time
In same scenario as above, imagine your bad photographer has already taken a few pics of you, but you're not happy with the result. If you're shameless, you'd ask the fella to take more photos even though he or she is ready to run off somewhere else. But if you're the type (like me) who does respect other people's time and lack of interest in ensuring you look hot in your pics, you'd let the fella off to go do his thing and proceed to snap pics of yourself in your own sweet time. As such, you don't result in photographer rage, such as follows.
4)You can take some cool pics that wouldn't be as cool if taken any other way
Especially useful if you're into extreme sports. Imagine the coolness of taking a profile pic of yourself while falling 10,000 feet from an airplace with the land below as your backdrop! Ok, that might be a bit extreme (although I'm sure someone would have done something equally as crazy before), but just as a real life example of a cool self pic, here's one I took on a roller coaster at Genting Highlands with my friends behind me.
Yes, I took a risk of having my camera drop into the ground and smash into a gazillion pieces...but the risk was worth it just coz' of this pic. :)
3) You can take quick photos with celebrities!
I once read about this guy in Hollywood who, everytime he met a celebrity, would ask to take a photo of him with them. But knowing that the celebs have little time to waste on waiting for him to pass his camera on to someone else to take the photo, this guy would just stand next to the celeb, hold the camera facing them at the right angle and snapy a quick photo... all in less than 5 seconds which was not enough time for most celebs to get over their amazement at the efficiency of this dude.
Unfortunately, I don't have any photographic evidence or even a URL link to demonstrated this coolness coz' my Googling failed to produce the desired results. But I assure you, it's a true story!
2) You can make cool projects like Noah Kalina
And I hear you say, who?? Noah Kalina is a guy who took a photo of himself every day for 6 years from 2000 to 2006 and compiled it all into a 5 minute and 46 seconds video, as shown below:
The video made him famous. Famous enough that even more famous people wanted to take photos with him, as seen here. And famous enough that it seems to have spawned a massive number of copycat videos. Just search for "takes photos every day" on Youtube, and there a long list of people doing the same thing.
Speaking of fame, that leads me to the top reason why self-photography is cool
1) You can become famous!
In addition to Noah Kalina, yours truly can also personally attest to the potential of self-photography in resulting in a certain level of fame, even if it's only for 15 minutes. Although in my case, my 'fame' is nothing more than getting my mug on the face of my company magazine, which distributed to all of my company's almost 500 offices around the world (for the purpose of self-protection, I warped the wordings on the mag cover and my company name. I still like to keep a low profile when it comes to my work. :P).
How I managed to get on my company's mag cover was pretty funny. The mag reporters wanted to do a story on the work I do (which is outdoor work and quite unique in my company), and they needed photos for the article. So my boss took me out to the field and we got a guy take a whole bunch of pics of us pretending to do stuff in the field. Then along the way, I used my own camera and my cute little mini tripod, stood it on the ground so the camera was facing up at me, and I knelt down at an angle where the camera could take me and the backdrop of the trees. My boss initially said not to take such a pic coz' it wouldn't be nice. But I thought it made a cool looking pic, and sent it in together with the other pics anyway.
It turned out the magazine people loved it! So much that they said it would make a great mag cover, and I had to take more photos to get a better one. So I did a 2nd shoot, with a colleague's DLSR (he was taking the photos this time), and one of those pics became the mag cover while my initial first pic with my own dingy point and shoot camera went in the mag accompanying the article on my area of work. And none of the other pics we took went into the mag. :P
So there you go, my case of the awesome-ness of self-photography has been made. Go out there and start practicing, you all! ^_^
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