Two Sides to Every Coin

 These two photos have a very narrow depth of field, because (more for this reason than most), I hide behind my hair a lot, which, I feel is easier to let people see than my face. I have problems with making eye contact, even with a camera, which I initially thought was going to pose a problem when taking a self portrait. Luckily, I was wrong.


...At least with these photos.


I put these photos in inverse because I want to show that there are two sides to every coin, and, when I was trying to do the 'What Makes Me, Me?' brainstorm in my sketchbook, I kept thinking of how hard it is to define a person - something that is ever changing; ever growing. 


I put these photos in black and white to add simplicity and make you concentrate on the shadows and the shapes created by the light and the heightening of contrast on photoshop. 


Also, for me, I think that seeing things in inverse makes you notice things that you hadn't noticed before; for example, in the normal photo it's hard to see the shape of my nose, but in the other photo it's easier because the shadow underneath it is white and more eye-catching.


I like the pensive quality to this photo, which is created by the third of space in front of my face. Also, having this space around me makes me the only focus of this photo... On top of this, the matte, plain background contrasts nicely with the texture of my hair and my skin colour.

 These next two photos were more difficult for me to have taken... I felt like I was looking into a giant eye when looking into the lens. I kept finding that either my concentration wandered, or I thought of those people on Facebook and Twitter who pull stupid faces in their profile pictures and kept smiling, feeling like a wannabe.


I decided that that would never be me... At least not anymore. The emotion in this photo is real. Why take a photo of yourself if it's not of yourself?


I have come to the conclusion that my favourite contrast in the two photos is in the eye... There is something haunting about an inverse eye - more haunting than say, an inverse ear, or an inverse toe. It has an emptiness in it, but, at the same time, it also makes you notice (upon comparing them) the different shades in the eye more and, on top of that, the little reflections of light that give the eye more life. Though in spite of noticing the eye twinkling livelihood of the eye through this, the inverse one I have decided looks quite dead. So it seems that the shades and tones were not the only things to have been reversed in this photo...

I was pleasantly surprised with these photos, as usually whenever I see a 'posed' photo of myself, I cringe internally (being the insecure fifteen-year-old-girl that I am).


Once again, my hair is partially covering my face, like in the previous photos and only part of my face is shown because I don't like my mouth and, besides, I wouldn't know what to do with it in a photo (it's crooked and my natural mouth position is not quite covering my teeth).


I also like the fact that my face is actually the only component of this picture... My face is completely surrounded by black (or white, in the inverse), which draws attention to my face and nothing distracting in the background.


However, the inverse showed the shiny-ness on my nose as a black splodge, which I'm not quite satisfied with, but I guess you can't have everything. Just goes to show you that putting photos in inverse, even temporarily, can make you notice things you didn't know were there. That is a lesson learned for next time... That, and get rid of shine before you do curves & levels on photoshop... It can get pretty nasty if you don't.


Also, I don't quite know how this happened, but next time I will do all I can to avoid it, but there is a dark splodge under my left eye... (your right) I don't know how it got there, but now it's had its fun and needs to leave my photograph alone.

So. Light me or Dark me? First we must decide which is which.