Beginning of 52 Weeks
“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of.”
One of the things I’m tying to do in 2021 is to take a photo every week. I do it through this website called 52 frames and they give me a prompt to do and it starts on Monday and I have until Sunday to submit my photo. I started this challenge last year when everything shut down to help me figure out what to shoot and help me be creative. I got out of rhythm of doing it so I ended up only doing a couple of weeks. In 2021 I want to do the whole year and I’m thinking I’ll create a book of some kind with all of the photos I take. I’ve only done one photo so far for the first week, which was a self portrait, and I’m working on the second week which is leading lines.
Starting the project and year with a self portrait was personally good for me. I far more enjoy being behind the camera than in front of it. Like most people walking on this planet I have insecurities. I often like to hide and not be seen and I don’t like being the center of attention. The vast majority of photos that happened in the last couple of years are of my capturing. I like the control I have when taking my own photo but it also comes with a hard side. The hard side being that I can only see every insecurity I have about my body and who I am as a person. Not just who I am as a person but as an artist. It wasn’t until about a little over a year ago I called myself to an artist out loud to a friend for the first time and I was so scared she was going to question the title I didn’t think I was fully or that I didn’t deserve. She didn’t question it at all like I thought she would and she actually did the opposite, she confirmed it. I still don’t any many ways but that doesn’t take away the fact that I am one. I often think that I’m not good enough to consider myself an artist. That is a tangent for another day. One benefit of me being taking my own photos is that I get to see my beauty. Staring at myself for hours between making sure the photos are what I want while I’m taking them and the editing shows me what I’m insecure about but it also has the benefit of what I like, and dare I say love about my body. It shows me the strength and beauty. It also shows me how intelligent I am and my persistence. Several years ago I vowed myself I wouldn’t do portrait photography because I thought I wound’t ever be good enough, I thought I wouldn’t enjoy it, and I had a fear that I wound’t help people feel the best versions of themselves. With the photos I take of myself it helps me see all of that isn’t true.
