1)How many Selfies do you take a week? What do you do with them? If you don't take Selfies, why not? I am not usually a participant in taking selfies by myself, instead I preferably take group photos with friends or family members at certain occasions or at a certain moment of time, however I do not do this frequently so I cannot give an exact figure for how many times I take a selfie weekly. The whole concept of taking these types of photos for myself is to just cherish memories with my friends and family in the future and to just recollect and reminisce my most memorable moments in life with the people most closest to me. I do not usually take selfies as I believe it is more of an activity where somebody who is self obsessed with the way they look and how they are presented is able to show off and be arrogant about their facial characteristics to people on the internet, I believe selfies are now usually attempted in order to increase vanity and self obsessiveness. 2)What, do you think, is the reason why taking Selfies has become so popular? Is there a downside to the taking and sharing of Selfies? At this current moment of time I do not believe taking selfies is as popular as they were before when camera phones first made an appearance, this is due to people first experiencing this form of photography which lead to the constant use of a new a form of photography which people were not familiar to. However due to the advancement in photographical technology currently selfies are not as popular and people have moved onto other forms of taking photos and other forms of photography. 3)What are the rules or conventions for taking a Selfie? Where do these come from? Is it OK to break these rules? The codes and conventions for taking a selfie is very simple, the common features of a selfie is when a camera is faced towards the facial region of somebody and the camera takes a photo of their face, so the rules of taking a selfie is simple due to it just consisting of a taking photo of your face or multiple faces.
The first Selfie Experiment that I attempted was The Reflected Selfie, due to the surroundings that I was in there was not very much choice of reflective surfaces and I did not want to just use a normal mirror so I attempted to be a more creative with this form of a selfie. I finally concluded this predicament by taking a reflective selfie using the rear view mirror of a car, I successfully accomplished this form of photography by not including the actual source of the photograph which was a mobile phone, this is because I believed that the photo may be ruined by this and would be a defect of the photo which would lead to the photo not being as good. Also I accomplished adding the scenario and scenery around me during the production of this photograph, other than the reflected selfie a road is also added to the photo which just adds another feature to the reflected selfie which only helps add another level of creativity towards the photo. Also in the photo I decided to conceal my photo in order to create actual mystery for the spectators of the photo as they do not know the participant of the photograph and would want to know how they actually look
The second selfie that I had attempted was the Obscured Selfie, the whole concept of this form of photography is to conceal your face, in both photos I had attempted it however I took two different approaches. The first photo contains some parts of my facial features such as my eye therefore not obscuring my entire face completely however it still constitutes as an Obscured Selfie which is what I was working towards. However, in comparison to the second photo my face has been completely obscured which creates a sense and form of mystery for observers of the photo, this is due to the spectators acquiring a lack of knowledge and understanding of the participant of this certain form of selfie. The effect of these photographs is a special feature of photography that does not feature so much in painting, the concept of this form of photography is that the camera flattens three dimensional space so that something in the foreground can appear to be on the same level as something else in the background, instead in the my attempts of an Obscured Selfie my face is still being concealed however is not on the same level as an opposing object which I would be in the background of
Lastly I experimented with the Shadow Selfie, photographs of ourselves and our body are formed from a shadow due to an image being created by forms of light and the absence of it. During this experiment I used a large lamp and directed the light towards the participant of the photo in order to form a shadow, again similarly to the Obscured Selfie the face of the participant is concealed which creates a sense of mystery as it is not made clear of who the person is and what their facial characteristics look like. In context of the world of photography, photographers are particularly sensitive to effects of light and due to this an internal manifestation of shadows formed from different forms of light has been created as it creates a form of an image which is not so particular
My Attempt: The Obscured Selfie
During my attempt of the Obscured Selfie I used many different obstacles in order to implement this concept of selfie into my photography project. I photographed selfies such as wire grids, a bottle, transparent mirrors and even a translucent mirror. This concept of selfies, in most cases, create a form of mystery as it is not made apparent who the participant of the photograph is and due to their facial features and characteristics being concealed it is very difficult to understand how they really look like. The photos which I taken had all occurred in different scenes, some of my photos appear in natural daylight and in just normal light which is formed through a lamp. However, some of my photos appeared in the dark and even a dark room which helps create slightly more creativity towards my photos and it is not a natural scenario or light which is perceived as 'natural' light
My Attempt: The Shadow Selfie
With this form of a photographic selfie I did not produce as many photos as the common theme is to just form a shadow from a figure and therefore document this. However, in the first photo I had placed some coloured plastic over the lamp in order to create a mysterious mixture of different colours instead of just the average boring white colour which a normal lamp would form. This form of selfie is particularly interesting as photographers are particularly sensitive to effects of light and so have long been interested in their own shadows, so to be able to replicate this form of photograph was extremely interesting
My Attempt: The Reflected Selfie
With these examples and attempts of the Reflected Selfie instead of using a larger variety of reflective surfaces I instead opted to just use a mirror. Similar to the Obscured Selfie I intended to produce this form of photography in different scenarios such as in a dark room which is what I did. In comparison to my recent attempt on the Reflected Selfie I believe these were a lot better as I was able to not include any phone or cameras in the photo which I believe usually ruins the photo if the source of the photograph is included in the photo