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Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Elements of Self: Mask self portrait

I read a very touching post  on a beautiful blog called FawnDear. It led me to another amazing blog, where I discovered a sort of organic event taking place with biweekly sharing of themed self portraits. Shakti Mama explains her motivations with "Too many of us have friends and family who hold us at an arm’s reach (I am certainly guilty of doing this myself!), and even we hold ourselves at an arm’s reach, but here — the blogosphere world — we have a space in which we can learn to be comfortable, to reveal intimacies, and, yes, show our faces.  There’s something undeniably compelling about this, about taking off the mask, so to speak."

Pretty awesome stuff, huh? Here is a link to this weeks self portraits that had the theme: Masks

The internet is an amazing playground. A way to connect to others unlike ever before. A way to show yourself in ways that you could not otherwise. However the irony of it all is it also provides cover while doing so, ways to hide while reaching out. And that is what masks represent to me as well. A way to hide while participating. A way to be brave enough to be your true self, while obscuring part of yourself at the same time.

I find I tend to merge the sharing/hiding thing when it comes to blog writing. I am showing and telling, but there is the control. The angles I choose to share. The right lighting, the hiding of the cluttered corners, perfection in chaos sort of stuff. Not done with any kind of deceit in mind at all. In fact, in 'real life' I often see in the macro. I'm just a person who tends to notice the pretty details in the not so pretty whole - and that is what I like to share on my blog: How I see. But the truth is, there is still some hiding of self involved, even if I am hiding it all from myself as well. On the net we all tend to wear masks.

I stumbled upon this link party a little late in the game. It is the last day of the first week, it is dark out already and I am in my pjs and not feeling the ability to get my artistic self awake enough for new photos. But I wanted to play so I searched through my past computer-taken self portraits. And oh... did I ever find my mask. I stumbled upon some glaringly obvious habits that my eyes were clear enough to see tonight since I have this thinky sort of hat on right now.

My Mask Self Portraits...

Lighting set in such a way to blow out my face. Obscure the clutter in the background.

Focus on just my eyes, maybe a hint of mouth. No features that I dislike in presence at all. No blotchy skin. No wrinkles starting to form.

It is embarrassing in a way to finally notice it. A sort hiding myself while sharing myself sort of thing going on. A mask of lighting. A mask of hair hiding my cheeks that have always felt too round.

Me. And not me.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

I entered a video contest! EEK!

I Am Bossy is sponsoring a contest on her blog where the winner will receive a Tempur-Pedic Cloud Supreme mattress. WOW! I'm so there! Oh wait! The only thing that had me stuttering a bit was you had to enter a video and post it on youtube. And it deadline is tonight. Oh my. And I am shy. I'm camera shy. Did I ever mention that? Oh goodness... so camera shy. So I was thinking this might not work for my horribly, intensely, unbelievably camera shy self.

BUT then common sense kicked in. Because dude, holy free Tempur-Pedic Cloud Supreme mattress batman. (Say that five times fast.) So my family and I put on our silly hats and danced around the room a few times and came up with something that made us laugh. We definitely will always remember today as a good day, since we had such a good time making this video together. And in the end that is all that is important, right? Though, sigh... can you imagine winning something like that?

I'm not going to post the video here, because I am not sure if that would break the publishing rules of the contest. I am so trying to pull my 'color outside the lines' self into submission for a proper entry. :0) But if you go to the contest link, I'm comment number 47. Ignore my Michigan accent, that is how folks sound around these parts.

I've obviously been away from my desk for awhile. SUMMER! Wow. What a warm and beautiful summer. I'm itching to return to the world of blog reading and writing though. I was trying to catch up a bit on the reading part today when I stumbled upon Bossy's contest.  I've been taking pictures along the way and have written many a blog post in my brain over the last few months. So I'll be back soon. Thanks to the people that have commented while I was away and to any new followers that arrived here in my absence.

Have a wonderful week! Forecast says hot with a side of rainforest/swampland-type humidity. Pretty much like it has been this whole summer so far. What that means for my personal forecast is curly hair, pink cheeks and another day of not mowing the lawn! I can live with that.