If you are a freelance writer or photographer chances are you have been asked, at some point, to submit a head shot with your work.  I can tell you when I started blogging my first investment was hiring a professional to take my photo. Hands down best money spent. I have used that head shot for almost three years now and sadly I’ll admit I’m looking a bit more how shall we say it? mature? these days.  I really resisted going with a formal head-shot because that’s just not who I am. I am creative and some times a free spirit and to me there is nothing authentic about an awkwardly posed, tightly cropped portrait. What started as a mission to get a good head shot, turned into yet another quest to capture the fleeting self.

I decided to start with the Polaroid Spectra 1200.  I love the Spectra for a few reasons, you can manually control the flash and with the timed exposure button,  you can achieve a double exposure. Something I learned from our very own muse Meghan (below) last year at photo camp. Check out Debra’s MM post about double exposure.

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I placed the Spectra on a tripod and found a nice East facing window and burned through a pack of expired Spectra film faster than you can say click and whrrl.

Not really happy about what I was getting I moved on to something a little more reliable, black and white Impossible Film PZ600

A few more and I decided they were still just flat, next up Impossible Project PX 680 Cool – now this stuff worked much better, especially for the double exposures.

A few more shots outside and I was not getting anywhere near what I had set out to do. Forget the head shot now I really wanted a photo to keep to remind me of  this crossroad I had reached in life, my mid-forties.  That is an entirely new post for a different day. For now I will continue to keep at this knowing that the actual practice of taking the self portrait is more life changing than the portrait itself.

“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.”  – Frida Kahlo

Lindsey aka modchik