INSTAGRAM PLANNED MY SELF-PORTRAIT SESSION

I love my instagram peeps and by now they’re familiar with my self-portraits.

In 2019 I took on project 52 in the form of a self-portrait every week. It was challenging to come up with new ideas and also more fun than I thought it would be.

In 2020 I didn’t do project 52, but I still love shooting self-portraits because they’re one of my favorite things to do.

However, I can get really comfortable with my usual studio setups and house plants for props.

SO I asked Instagram to plan it out for me and it turned out like this:

How did we get here?

I posted these polls on my stories (bold won):

• indoor vs outdoor

• artificial light vs natural

• dressy vs casual wear

Then I posted a question sticker asking for any other ideas, comments, etc…

That’s when a few mentioned doing it out in the desert, or by cactus, or desert glam, or using a hat as a prop, etc…

So the “Desert Glam” self-portrait session planned by Instagram was born!

Some lessons learned on this shoot:

• I should have arrived a little earlier than I did. I planned my timing for this like I would a client session. Self-portraits take a little more time to setup then you’re running back and forth to the camera to see what you just did. In hindsight I’d like to have arrived at least 30 minutes earlier or even an hour.

• I love to shoot back-lit portraits like these, my remote however isn’t a big fan. It was hard to get my camera and remote to see each other for these to work. I could have used the app, but didn’t want to deal with it honestly. I also could’ve used the timer, but timer shots aren’t my favorite. The best fix for this would have been to just use the damn app as a remote shutter. However, I think I managed well with the remote.

All in all, I’m super happy with the result!

I’m definitely letting instagram plan another self-portrait session soon! Want to be apart of the planning committee? Follow me here: @hearttakethewheel