Why my self portraits are my best selling images, no it's not my face.
Now I’m sure my face has something to do with it, A LITTLE BIT. But it’s only a little bit. My self portraits are my best selling images, they are on countless book covers and continue to sell regularly each month.
When I first started photography it was back in the day when selfies were NOT a thing, no one wanted to model for me bar my best friend at the time because she was doing photography too. So the rise in self portrait photographers happened, there was a buzz of us, we gained popularity rather quickly and it was a pretty good scene at the time. Eventually after a couple of years I edged away from self portraits and then completely until about 2-ish years ago and I came back to it full force. From a range of photographers back in those days a lot of them still feel some of their self portraits are their best work, their most creative and recognisable.
Why?
I personally create characters, stories, suggestions of stories. I can be a badass post apocalyptic character to a sensitive looking girly girl from the 1900’s and most things in between. When I’m alone with my camera, my props and wigs I don’t have to hide behind shyness of people watching me like normal models. I can try out different expressions without judgement, different poses without giggles, all this quiet solitude of space gives me breathing room to try everything out.
It’s great because things that work, really well, I pass on to my regular models during client shoots.
Also after all this time of practising, I know my face. I know my angles, I know when light hits my face a certain way it looks best, my eyes catching the light is always a plus but surprisingly I can look very serene, sad and wistful which I didn’t think I would master after years of trying. It paid off though, in the last year I’ve managed to pull it off somehow. Because of all of this, THIS is the reason my self portraits are my best selling images. I try everything, there’s a lot of content, different content. Content where it doesn’t even look like me at all.
It’s why I encourage all of you to try self portraits. Regardless of how you ‘look’ or perceive yourself. Even if it’s to try some random and crazy poses for you to pass on to your future models.
Of course I still use models, as I’m sure you all know! I love working with models, it’s easier in some ways. And a side note which is rather funny more than anything, I wish on reflection I hadn’t gotten as heavily tattooed as I am because it’s a bitch to edit.
If you want to see your own self portraits published across the globe you can learn every step of the way right here.
