Self Portraits: Telling Your Unique Story | Tabitha Park | Skillshare
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Self Portraits: Telling Your Unique Story

teacher avatar Tabitha Park, Product & Food Photographer

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      0:47

    • 2.

      Project Description and Word Web

      5:07

    • 3.

      Equipment and Technique

      8:39

    • 4.

      Behind the Scenes

      2:11

    • 5.

      Lightroom Edit

      9:29

    • 6.

      Self Portrait Slideshow

      5:38

    • 7.

      Final Thoughts

      0:56

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About This Class

In this class we'll dive into a self-exploration exercise to define a story we can tell about our lives through self portraiture.

For the class project you'll need to choose a theme from your life to portray and then orchestrate a photo session where you are the subject!

I've included several tips and tricks throughout this course to help you along the way. I've also shared a collection of my own self-portraits that I've taken over the years as examples.

I hope that you choose to share your images with us! It can be hard to put yourself in the spotlight but we grow so much through sharing our art with others.

I can't wait to see what you create!

Meet Your Teacher

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Tabitha Park

Product & Food Photographer

Top Teacher

Hi! I'm Tabitha and I teach photography classes. I'm a lifestyle, product, and food photographer living in the Pacific Northwest with my husband, our 17 gorgeous chickens, and Smallcat! I love plants and coffee and naps. In my spare time I'm a reckless gardener (irl and in Stardew Valley), and unapologetic hobby starter. Currently hyperfixating on crochet, embroidery, and spoon carving!

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Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Tabitha. In this photography class, we are going to be telling stories through self portraiture. I'm going to lead you through an exercise where we will dissect different parts of our lives and figure out what's going to be the most visually compelling that we can convey in a photo. Then, I'll take you through how to actually take the picture using tripods and self-timer mode, or if you're using your phone, different things you can do to help that. Go a little smoother for you. I'm super excited for this class. My name is Tabitha. I am a lifestyle photographer, a content creator, and a teacher here on Skillshare. I think that we're going to make some pretty cool stuff in this class. I'll try and keep it short and sweet. Yeah, let's dive right in. 2. Project Description and Word Web: Okay. So, for our class project, we are going to be creating a self-portrait that tells our story. It doesn't have to be the story of our life, just one of them, just one of the things, something about you that makes you, you. It can be as deep or a surface level as you want. For example, when I was 16, my brother was killed in a car accident. It has been 10 years since that happened. So me and two of my other siblings, all got matching tattoos to commemorate. That's a weird word. It's X's. X marks 10 years and X is how his name was Xander. And so, I can choose to tell that story and take it as like, this tattoo was something we didn't think we could make it one day without him, and somehow we made it a week, a month, a year, 10 years went by. We made it, 10 years. Through this insane horrible tragedy, we made it 10 years, and that is something worth celebrating. And so, I can take this experience and turn it into a photo. Or if I'm just not up for that emotional roller coaster, I could take a picture with my cat unloading the dishwasher because she always helps me unload the dishwasher. So, these are just a couple ideas that I have been thinking of because I've had the time to think of all of these things. But to help you come up with your own ideas, I wanted to lead you through how to make a WordWeb. Just a web that demonstrates different parts of you in your life, and then whatever sparks of visual depiction of that, you'll start to see pictures in your head and you'll be like, "Oh, that would be a cool picture to take." And so once something gets visualized, it's a lot easier to create it. And so hopefully, that will help unlock some portrait ideas in your head, and I have a ton of other examples along the way because, for some reason, I love photographing myself. And so I've got examples from my adolescent years and on. So, yes, I'll kind of share those with you on what I was thinking along the way. You'll watch me shoot and we will get this show on the road. So, yes, let's do our WordWeb. To start out, you're going to want to put your name in the very center and then build off from there. The first thing that comes to mind for me is cats. I've always been a huge cat lover ever since I was a little kid. My cat's name is Smallcat. I could tell her story. We found her in a tree wearing pants, so that was exciting. But she mostly follows me around the house when I do the dishes in the kitchen. She likes to sit on my shoulder when I'm working, so I can incorporate that in a picture. Another big part of my life is photography. So, I could incorporate my camera in a picture, maybe using a mirror. I thought that might be kind of a fun idea. I love chocolate. I'm very passionate, but I also photograph it for a living, so it's kind of fun. I thought it might be cool if I do a shot from above with chocolate around me. Dreaming of chocolate, or just like laying in it with my hair everywhere. I also really love coffee. I drink it black. Every morning I grind my own beans, fresh, in my little coffee grinder. I could incorporate my morning routine in an image. I thought it might also be a fun visual. Have you seen those milk bath photos? I thought I could do like a latte bath, so I kept a Photoshop myself and make a cup of coffee like a latte, do some kind of picture that way. I also love to cook and bake. I'm always in the kitchen creating something. I also like to sew and do some crafts. I like watercolor a lot, so I can incorporate some of my crafts in my pictures. I am actually a huge proponent of recycling. I use reusable bottles and I try and recycle all my glass. Our city doesn't accept glass, so I actually have to box it up and drive it to at a glass dumpster in the next city over. So I thought it might be kind of fun to have a picture of me standing there with my box of glass, and have the giant glass dumpster there with all the little bits of a broken glass all over the ground sparkling in the sun, if that paited a fun strong visual. And then of course, my brother, so I would want to think about some different things that remind me of him. He really liked to drink energy drinks and he would save the little tabs on the top for me because my name is Tab, and so I had a little collection of energy drink tabs from him. He was working on getting his private pilot license, and so planes were kind of important to him, and then of course, incorporating my X tattoo in a picture, showing that off would be another good little reminder. then, once you have a good WordWeb and a lot of ideas, I like to just choose my top three. So the first one that really is striking to me is that picture of my cat on my shoulder in the kitchen while I'm doing dishes, and then my second favorite was this shot from above with the chocolate all around. I feel like that would really depict where I am at in my life right now. then lastly, I liked the visual associated with this glass dumpster shot. So I really feel like these three ideas had the strongest visuals, and so I could take any one of them and run with it. Okay, now that we have some ideas, let's dive into the technical side of things. 3. Equipment and Technique: All right, let's talk about the tools that we'll need. For this class, I'm going to be using a DSLR. But you can totally use a phone or a point shoot whatever kind of camera that you have. We will need a tripod. I have this me photo tripod. It's pretty sturdy. I got it because it's lightweight and so it's better for like backpacking. I don't do a ton of pictures like out in the wind or in a creek and so portability was more important to me than stability. So, this tripod is awesome for that plus it's cute. If you don't have a tripod, you can find any smooth flat surface that is sturdy that will hold your camera up. It will just limit where you can take your pictures. So, just keep that in mind. For one of the self portraits that I took, I actually put my camera in the fridge and then I took a picture like showing all the stuff from the fridges perspective of me. I've also done one inside my dryer different fun places that you can put your camera and you don't need a tripod but a tripod just offers a lot of flexibility and makes things a little easier. We are going to be using self timer mode and if you have it, it is going to be so much easier for you. Basically, self timer mode has a couple different settings typically. You can set a delay, so you push the shutter and then there's a 5 or 10 second delay between the time you pushed it and the time it takes its first photo. So, changing that number. Then there's also the number of shots taken. So, it'll take like 10 pictures with a 10 second delay. So, you push the button, it waits 10 seconds and then it goes picture, picture, picture. So, it takes 10 pictures and so you have time to do your thing between each of the shots and so it will take all your pictures and then you can get up, come back to your camera, look, make sure it's in focus. Make sure you're in the right spot in the photo and your settings are all good, and so it's this back and forth motion that you do. A way to make this even easier is by using an infrared remote. So, you would shine your remote and it would talk to the infrared receiver on the camera and then that would initiate the trigger. So, if you are just like covered in Cheetos or something for your picture and you can't get up every time but you know you're in focus everything's good. You can just and then just do your pictures, do your pictures, eat your Cheetos, and then do it again. So, you don't have to get up as much and so that takes it a step further. If you don't have the option to have it take multiple pictures, you can definitely have it set to self timer mode, do the one, get in place, smile, it'll take your picture and you're back and forth back and forth more often. So, basically the more intricate your self timer settings are, the easier it's going to be to get an effective photo while you're shooting. So, I'm shooting with a D750, and so in order to change the shooting menu, I need to push this little button here and twist my dial till we get to the little timer, the self timer. This tells the camera to use the self timer settings that you program in here. So, to get to the self timer settings we hit the menu. So, we're going to navigate to this side menu right here and then go down to the custom settings menu and then go down to timer's and auto switcher lock. So, the timer's menu, go to self timer and this is where we can change our self timer settings. So, the self timer delay is set to 10 seconds. That means I push the trigger and then 10 seconds later, it takes the first photo. The number of shots I can change anywhere from one to nine. I have it set to nine right now so I don't have to go back and forth between the camera and where I'm standing over and over. So, I'm going to leave it at nine, and then the interval between shots, I have it set to two seconds. You can have it be half a second so it's like picture, picture, picture, picture, picture or a lot slower. So, three seconds, so it just takes them with more time in between so that you have time to change positions if you need to. I feel like two seconds is a pretty safe bet because it is a long enough time that I can move around and get a variety of shots without getting too many that are too similar or missing moments. All right, to set up self timer mode on an iPhone. This is an iPhone 6S Plus, I have the camera opened. I'm going to flip it around so that what you're seeing is a little more interesting, "Oh, hello, how is it going, it's me." Anyway, so we're going to hit this little timer button and our options say off three seconds or 10 seconds. So, we are going to set it to three seconds and then we are going to take our picture. I'm so happy. This is such a flattering angle. Ready? Three, two, one. It actually takes 10. It takes 10, a burst of photos there for you to choose your favorites and if your flash is on, so, if you have it face the other way and your flash is on. It's set to auto but if I put my hand here it'll turn on. So, that means flash is going to happen if I do this. Three, two, one. It actually just takes one picture instead of 10 because it would have to fire the flash over and over and over and that would just destroy your battery and your flashes. So, anyway, so the flash mode it will only take one picture. So, if you're taking a group shot at night, and it only takes one and you can't figure out why it's because it is dark and it's using the flash. So, that is how you would take a self timer shot with your iPhone, if you have the same iPhone as me. Then lastly, I just wanted to show you your options for actually taking your picture with your phone. Of course, we have the on screen shutter button which you can click and it'll take your picture that way. If you have self timer mode setup you push the button, stand back, take the picture. The second method is to press the up or down volume keys and so that will take a picture that way and then the third way is to hook up a pair of headphones. These are the headphones that came with my phone, and then you can push the up or down volume buttons and it will take a picture that way. So, this is helpful like if you want to take a self-portrait and your options are selfie and you don't want to get your arm in the side of the picture, you can position your phone upon something and then stand back a good distance using the headphones but putting them down so you don't see them and then taking your picture that way. If you're using your phone and you don't have a tripod, I feel like phones can be a little bit harder to balance. Sometimes I have taken like a chair and then just taped my phone to the chair and then used that as a tripod. So, getting creative, finding different ways to put your phone up, you can put it in a glass and set the glass somewhere, you can nest it in a bowl of oranges and have it hold your phone up right like that. It can just be a little trickier to reach your shutter if it's in a bowl with other stuff. So, get creative, figure out what's going to be effective if you have ideas, for people who don't have tripods and you're just like "Oh, guys use this," like feel free to throw that in the comments and we can all just like help each other out. I'm all about makeshift tripods. This is a tripod I created using a light stand, a clamp, and the jaws of two sea creatures. So, whatever you can find should do the trick. When I'm shooting self portraits, I almost always use manual focus. I do manual focus because my camera is set to when I have press it'll focus and so if I'm pressing the trigger, it's going to refocus before I can get back to my spot and so my pictures are going to come out blurry. It's just much easier if you just set your camera or your lens to manual focus, so that you don't have to worry about that. A way to get the spot of the picture in focus when you're not there if you're shooting alone. So, obviously if you've got a person make them stand where you're going to stand and then focus on them. Lock your focus and then have them move and then you can get in that same spot so that you know you'll be in focus, or if you have like a chair or a broom or a spot on the counter, you can set your phone somewhere near a counter or a table that you're going to be standing by, focus on the phone, get out of there. Different tricks and things that you can use to get your focus where you want it before you start shooting so you don't have to guess and check. Guess and check works, but it does take up time and space on your memory card of blurry photos that you wish were not blurry and they are so sad. So, yeah, tripod, self timer mode, manual focus and an infrared remote if you're super fancy and covered in Cheetos. Next, I'm going to walk you through what was going through my head when I was shooting this picture of me and my cat unloading the dishwasher in my kitchen. 4. Behind the Scenes: All right. So, here's some behind the scenes footage of what it looks like when I'm taking my self-portrait. So, I've got my camera set up on a tripod. I think this image is going to be most effective in a portrait mode, so I have my camera turned to the side, and I've already taken the time to crop it and take some preliminary shots, so that I know that I'm going to be in the frame and in focus. So, see whether the stack of dishes are on the counter. That's about where my focus is, and so I just want to make sure I stay in that sector of the kitchen, and you'll see I wander a little bit as I'm putting dishes away, but for the most part I try and stay in that area, so that I know I'll be on focus. My cat she's a little not feeling the shoulders situations today. She kind of wants to jump off a lot, so I try and create, recreate these moments with her, but she wasn't really in the mood. I feel like though despite that we were able to get a lot of effective images and so it all worked out. So, once I got my nine shots in my first sequence I actually have to stop, go back to my camera, press the shutter again and it takes another nine. So, keeping this in mind going back and forth and making sure that your camera is actually taking pictures when you're ready for it. Then, I got sick of my hair down, so I went ahead and pulled it up for some of the pictures just for variety mixing it up, checking things as I go. Then, I noticed small cat wanted to jump off of me a lot and so I figured I would let her do that. I ended up moving my camera a little bit, so that I might be able to get a shot of her in mid-air. I thought that'd be super fun. I wasn't able to get like the shot. I think if I'd spent more time really trying to nail it. But, I didn't want to tire her out. She seemed like, she put up with enough by this point. So, I gave her some treats and let her go. But, yeah, once I get to the end I've done six or seven sequences of my nine photos and I go ahead and look through on the back of my camera to make sure that I'm in focus and that I feel like I've got some winner images to choose from, and then I go ahead and take my memory card to my computer and really like sort through them. So, we'll look at my sorting and editing process next. 5. Lightroom Edit: All right. This section is all about editing. So, I'm going to show you how I'd call and edit a photo in Lightroom. Every photo that I've ever shared, ever, anywhere, has been edited likely, because I believe that pictures aren't really done until they have been touched up, and worked on, and pushed to their highest potential. So, yeah, I shoot in raw. Raw, it's a mode that saves as much data as possible in the image. So, it tends to come out honestly a little bit gray, so that you can take it in so many different ways. If you're shooting in JPEG because you don't have a raw processing editing program on your computer, that's totally cool. Nothing wrong with shooting in JPEG. I'm just telling you this is what I do and why. So, yeah. Let's look at Lightroom. So, I went ahead and exported all the photos from this session. You can see on this sidebar, it has the date. This is just how my computer automatically organizes things, and then how many photos I took. So I took 129. The first couple are going to be my test shots, and then the rest are going to be what I took with my self-timer mode. These first few were without my cat and so we're just going to go ahead and scroll past those. Once we start getting into the pictures with the cat, I just want to select them, go to the Develop menu. It will pull it up nice and big and then I just arrow keys through them until I find images that I feel like have a good connection between us. This one's pretty cute but it seems like I'm between expressions. That one's a little cuter. This one I actually already edited and I loved how this one turned out. I feel like she's kind of paying attention to me. She's not trying to get away and I'm more like casual looking, and I have dishes in my hand. So, it's clear that this is the story I'm telling so I feel like this image is really compelling so, we'll come back to this one. But, I just wanted to show you some more outtakes. Pictures where I'm not looking at the camera, I feel like aren't as effective because then it's just the back of my head, it's my messy hair. So, those ones I want to go ahead and skip over. See, this one I'm further back in the image and so, I'm not in focus and it's just my back. So, it's not very interesting to look at. This one, you can't see small cups [inaudible] . So, it's like what is she holding? We don't really know. I want to make sure that I pick a picture where we're both looking. I feel like this one's pretty close because it's a moment where I'm interacting with her, and I have a dish in my hand, but maybe she's not 100 percent in it. So I think this one's cute but I can do better. So, I went through. Here's one that I thought was kind of cute. She's looking right into the camera, I'm doing my thing, and she's just my little baby. So, yeah. These are just some of the ones I ended up liking. That one's pretty nice. I realized that like I'm pretty close to the edge on this one so later on, I actually refocused because I guess my coffeepot is not really that important for this picture. Whereas if I had a little more breathing room on this edge, it might come out more. Have a better composition. Here's one that's super cute. I'm giving her kisses and she's focused. You can definitely tell it's a cat so it's very clear, the story isn't vague at all. This is a shot I love. I think it's super cute. I like that I pulled my hair up because I feel like it made it easier to tell the difference between my hair and my cat. It wasn't just like all one big blob of hair. It's the two of us and it's just a cleaner silhouette. So once I go through and find the pictures that I feel like are strong, I add a one star. So, this will separate them from the rest, and then when I go into my filter settings, I can just click on one star and it will pick out just the ones that I went through and thought were nice. So then, I can go through and choose between these five and decide which ones are going to be the most effective. So, I like this one because she looks like she's ready to jump and I'm focused on the dishes. So we're doing our own thing and looking opposite directions. But, I also love just like this one because she doesn't look like she wants to get away. She looks like she's just like wanting to be held and I'm trying to do the dishes. I also love the color matching between her eyes and my shirt, I feel like that's really nice. That was unintentional. So, I feel like I've got a lot of good images to work with here. So, let me just show you what my editing sequence is like. So I'm just going to back up on this picture. As you can see, this is my straight out of camera. It's pretty pale. it's not very contrasted. There's not a lot of saturated colors and so, I really want to make this picture the best it can be. So, I'm going to start at the top. I'm just going to change the exposure, I'm going to bring it up just a little bit, and then bring up the contrast. So, this will make the darks darker and the lights lighter. I'm going to kick up my shadows just a little bit to add some detail in the darker areas of the picture, and then bring my blacks down for a little bit more contrasts. My whites, I usually kick up just a little bit and then I'm actually going to bring my vibrance and saturation up about five ticks each. At this point, I really feel like the image is basically there. It seems a little warm. I'm going to bring the temperature down just a little bit, just to give off that midday glow a little bit. It's not toward the end of the day so it doesn't need to be super warm. Let's see, what else can I do? I feel like this image is a little bit pink, honestly. My walls are gray, but there are green gray and so I always like to add a little bit on the green side just so that, that is showing the rest of the colors more true to life. Then, I'm going to play with my tone curve just a little bit to add a little more depth to the image. So, I'm pulling my darks and my shadows down and then I might bring my whites up from the basic menu up here. So, bring those up just a little bit and then I'm going to do some selective editing. I've got a couple spots on my face that are a little distracting so I'm just going to click those out. Cool. Then, I feel like that is pretty much there. If I want to share this on Instagram, I can go ahead and crop it like this or what I like to do is if I know that I'm going to have multiple crops, I'll do a right click on the photo down here on the menu and then I will do "Create Virtual Copy", and so that makes another image. So, basically, it doesn't have the history from before, it just copies the photo and so I can't go back and unedit it unless I drag all these sliders to zero. But, I can play with the crop on this one and then I don't have to reset the crop a bunch of times if I want to change it up. So, I'm going to go into this. It says original, I'm going to change it to say one by one for a square and then drag on the inside of the square to adjust where it cuts off. So, keeping important things in the crosshairs, I'm going to keep my face right here in this sector of the image and then make sure that I don't cut my leg off right at the knee. If I cut it off right at the knee, it's really visually uncomfortable so I want to pull it down just a little bit so you can see my knee and then it opens out and so it's not cutting me at my limbs. Then, I feel like this is an effective crop. It seems straight. If I wanted, I could try and straighten it a little bit with the edge of this oven but either way is fine. Then, that would be my nice clean crop for Instagram. Now that I can see it a little closer, I feel like I need to bring my shadows up just a little bit so that it's not just like this blackness that you can't see into. Then, I would call that done. So what I like to do when I export is I just right click on the image, open up my Export menu, I pick a folder so we are going to call it Smallcat, SmallcatKitchen and then I scroll down to my File settings. These are my typical File settings. I used to have my quality slider up to 100 percent but I read online that you can't even tell the difference between a photo that set to 90 and a photo that's set to a 100. They're virtually the same but one of them is a lot smaller file size and that is the 90. So, I usually leave my quality at 90 and then I check this box. It says, "Limit file size to 1,800K," because that is a size that I can post to SkillShare and I don't get that dialog box that says my pictures are too big and so I like to leave that one checked. I do end up resizing the image so I change the long edge to 2,500 pixels and I leave the resolution at 240. I do this because then, I don't have a massive image that's going to get re-sampled by Instagram or Facebook and dramatically reduce its quality. I feel like this works for me. I have my Sharpen Settings for Screen, standard amount of sharpening. Then, I have my Export settings set to do nothing. Usually by this point, I see the output sharpening and I remember that I didn't actually sharpen my image. So, if you hit Cancel, you can come down. We'll add some sharpening. I'm going to drag it up about halfway, and then I'm going to drag the mask up and hit Control. This will change my photo black and white. Anything that's white gets sharpened so I want to bring it up so that my skin looks totally black because I don't want to sharpen like the wrinkles on my skin. So, I just bring it up so that it's just the edges, the edges of my glasses, the edges of my clothing, all the edges in the picture. Then, I let go. That is where it has sharpened. I can adjust how little or how much the sharpening is on there. I usually end up about halfway here and over halfway here. Then, I can actually export and because I cancelled out my export, it actually saved all my settings so I can just hit export and it is ready to use. So, yeah, that's basically my rundown with Lightroom. 6. Self Portrait Slideshow: All right. Then lastly, I want to just go through all of these portraits that I showed you throughout this class and give you some background information in case you care, or you're looking for some inspiration or direction. This first picture I took as a homework assignment, the prompt was dream. So, I did take a picture about my dream, and my dream at the time was to hack down all the sagebrush bushes in the state because that's the one thing I'm allergic to. When they turn yellow, it destroys me. I'm just a mess because I'm so allergic to it. So, that was my dream. I took this picture the very same day. This is me showcasing my pinnacle of fashion basically. So, this windbreaker was my grandma's. I still have it, and I wear 80s dancing religiously because it is the best case. The boots were my grandpa's, the boa constrictors snakeskin boots. Then the polka dot shorts, I actually made myself. I had a whole collection of brightly colored crazy shorts that I wore, and that was just what I did. I was very in touch with my unique fashion sense at the time. This picture I took, it was another homework assignment. This one I wanted to show off different pressures in my life. So, I was very religious growing up. So, I had a lot of pressure to stay religious. Then I also was having the opposite pressure is like get a tattoo, and be edgy, and drink energy, drinks like the opposite of what the church I was in wanted me to be. So, I want to do a picture where I was kind of half and half, and you can see the polls there, and my like uneasiness about the whole thing. Speaking of religion, this is my husband and I, right after we got engaged. He actually proposed right here in front of this temple, and then we were married there four months later. Crazy. This was a wild time and religion was very important in my life at this point. This is a picture when I was engaged, I had just gotten my wedding dress, and so I'm 18 years old, I'm still in college and I'm jumping into a marriage. So, this picture is I think a little more introspective and I'm looking at my dress, and kind of had a lot going on in my mind. So, I wanted to convey that transition there. I also did a lot of babysitting. So, these are two of the kids that I used to babysit in their little nook. We were having a tea party that was kind of fun. This is a picture of me with my pets. I had a betta fish named James Franco, and a cat named Nova. I thought it would be fun to take a picture through the fishbowl with her wanting to get the fish, and those are my pets. This is also a picture of my cat. I was in charge of taking out the cat litter at the time, we had five cats. So, it was a big task. Every time I cleaned the cat litter, the dust would get on my clothes and I would smell like cat litter and I hated it. So, I actually wore a garbage bag when I did that. So, this was my garbage bag pic. Other chores I had to do living at my parents house was the dishes, and the laundry. This shop I actually ended up repricing in my laundry chute in the more current day in my house. I also did my refrigerator shop which I talked to you about at the time I was giving up sugar. So, I went three months without sugar. So, I was constantly reading labels and making food from scratch. So, I had a fridge full of leftovers, and I was just scrutinizing everything super closely. This is a head shot I took to display my friend's scarf, she actually designed the pattern and I ended up in and sent her some promo pictures for her to use and I thought well it's a good time to take an updated self-portrait so that I could use as a profile picture online. Then this picture, I wanted to share, I don't know if you guys remember, 2016 was the year of the dumpster fires. It was a lot of stuff happening in 2016 that was really hard. I feel like everybody was in a really bad mood about it at the end of the year. But honestly, 2016 was such a good year for me. I had a lot of transformations, and figuring out who I was, and I spent a lot of time with really good friends and it was just a really good year for me. So, I made a T-shirt that said "2016 Fan Club" and took a picture and posted it. Just basically wanted to put out some positive vibes about the year and be like you know, what was that all about like there was some good stuff too. This picture, I wanted to experience the vulnerable feeling that I put people through when I take their pictures. So, one way that I feel really vulnerable is when I don't wear my glasses. I feel like my face looks weird, and I don't know where to look because I can't see very well. So, I wanted to do a picture where I don't have any makeup, and I don't have glasses on, my hair still wet from my shower, and it's just simply me. So, that was a fun exercise that I did there. This picture is a little bit out of focus which I actually like because without my glasses, I can't see. So that helps illustrate that story also. Then this picture, every year my husband and I take an anniversary photo holding last year's photo. So, it just goes on and on and on. Now, that we've been married almost seven years, we have a lot of these. So, this is just a picture that we do every year. Then that brings us to today. With me, and my cat in my kitchen doing my thing. I think that it's important to take self portraits over time because it will tell your story as it changes, who I was at the very beginning of this slide shows, completely different from who I am now. That's a good thing. It's depicting your physical emotional change and you can look back and remember what you were thinking and feeling at the time, and you have a record of each of these times in your life, and who you were and all the facets of who you are as a human. So, yeah. Thank you for sitting through this with me. I hope this was helpful. 7. Final Thoughts: That's it. Thanks so much for taking my class. I hope that you enjoyed it. I hope that you decide to share your self-portraits with us. I know it can be kind of vulnerable to put yourself out there like here's my face or whatever, but I really think there's power in sharing the art that you create, and I really want to see. If you decide to share your images on Instagram, if you tag me my handle's just @tabithapark. If you tag me, then I can come take a look and give you some feedback if you want that. I just love seeing your work. Yeah. So, if you have any questions or need extra help, have any photography related issues that you're running into, feel free to just drop a line in the discussion section of this class and I will totally respond. If you have suggestions for future things that you want to see me teach, I'd love to hear that also. I'm always looking for new ideas, so yeah. Thanks again for watching. See you next time.