Inspiring photography project ideas: creative self portraits

Dominick Reed's project can equally be described as a photo a day project and creative self portrait project. At the start of 2010, Dominick set out to take one photo a day for a year in a bid to improve his photography skills. But as if committing to shooting a photo every day wasn't enough, Dominick has now stretched his plans until at least the end of 2011. Creating a character from his self-portraits (the curiously named Mr Flibble), each image tells a story.

Doing a project like this in public means you have an audience that would witness your failure if it were to happen - avoiding that is a great motivator!

Dominick, how did the project start?
I'd seen a few of my friends do similar things and always laughed at how lucky I was not to be doing the same - it looked like a horrendous time sink and a real burden on your life.  But when it came around to the start of 2010 I figured I'd start my own to "improve".  I can honestly say, that if you're serious about improving anything, then there's no better project to do than a forced daily activity.  I chose photography, but I've seen a person who was laughably bad at drawing become an oil painting artist in a year, simply by forcing themselves to practice.  I also convinced myself that the project would leave me with a documented year of my life that I could look back at when I'm old and crinkly.

How do you find inspiration every day?
Well, inspiration is clearly the hard part.  It would be terribly easy to take a quick shot of my dinner plate or some other random thing to satisfy the daily photo requirement, but it's not quite in the spirit of self-improvement.  Frequently, I'll stand in front of the camera with a few randomly chosen props, take some photos and see what happens.  What typically occurs is I'll review those first few shots and it'll spark an idea that'll then make me get the appropriate props to make that idea really happen.  There's nothing like starting to take a picture to give you the inspiration for a different picture.

Because props can be a great source of inspiration, I have found myself collecting them.  Car boot sales, charity shops and eBay are all brilliant places to scour for unusual objects or crazy clothes.  Car boots are usually the best bang for buck, with most things costing the universal price of a car boot item - 50p.  That said, I've definitely bought a couple of hundred pounds worth of props, but I figure I could easily have spent that same amount on a single piece of furniture.

How long does it take to finish a photo from planning, set-up through to manipulation?
Crumbs.  This varies a lot.  I believe the quickest I've ever managed is 10 minutes from start to finish, but that's pretty exceptional and normally the result of having some social life thing to attend.  More typically it'll be thirty minutes to an hour with a couple that might take me 2-3 hours if I'm going heavy on the processing.  What I would say is that I've definitely got quicker over the years.  I know how to set up my lights as I need them, I know which lens to use for the required effect and my processing has definitely got more efficient.

Fitting it into my life can be a struggle - I have a good job and there are clearly days where I work late, need to eat and yet still have my photo lurking there in the background nagging me that I still haven't done it yet and it's 11pm already.  I think you can spot the late, "no ideas" photos if you look carefully.

Tell us a bit about the average set up?
I've definitely developed a safe setup that I can rely on when I don't have any time.  And that's typically a wide-angle lens, about 15cm away from my face with softboxes to the side and sometime above or below too.  Being so close to the camera means I can always self-trigger through a cable release (or sometimes a remote) and nail the focus point.  I'll usually shoot at F11, which often surprises people, but it's very forgiving and ensures it's sharp to the back of my head.  If I do want a really shallow depth of field, then it's normally a case of just taking a lot of photos until one's in focus, but getting this right is definitely something you can improve on with practice.

For the really tricky shots, where I know I'm either going to get too messy to touch my camera or need more immediate feedback on the composition without leaving my pose, then I'll setup my laptop to both trigger the shutter at a regular interval and display full screen the photo I've just taken.  For example, when I covered myself in Marmite I knew it was going to get messy and I could look at the screen to see whether I'd got "the shot" and stop the stupidity of the activity. As a bonus, I was able to string together those images into a time-lapse movie.  Idiotic, but people liked it.

Can you talk us through what the manipulation involves, what processes you use?
I spend most of the time in Adobe Bridge where I'll star the pictures that have the most promise from the 50-100 that I usually take.  I aim to whittle them down to 1 or 2 that I'll actually work on.  Often, the only work I'll do to a photo will be tweaking the RAW file in Bridge - taking it into Photoshop is sometimes overkill.  I hate to crop, but if I do I usually do this again in Bridge.

In PhotoShop, I love using the distortion tools to give my pictures a more comical feel and more recently I've been using textures a lot more to give either a grungier or more interesting look and feel.

 

How do you find the motivation to keep going with the project?
I guess I'm a pretty determined person and I hate going back on a promise I've made.  Doing a project like this in public also means you have an audience that would witness your failure if it were to happen - avoiding that is a great motivator!

I learnt pretty early on that I always have no ideas.  Once you get used to the fact that you don't have an idea for the day's photo you begin to trust that you'll be able to come up with one.  So knowing that 10 days into the project I'd already run out of ideas and that 500 photos later I still feel that way is somehow reassuring.

But gosh... there are days when I could so easily give up.  I could be living a different life!  I could watch TV again or play computer games, but no, this is what I enjoy doing.

Most photographers prefer to be behind the camera, have you always taken self portraits?
I think I always had in mind way back when I first bought my camera that I'd like to make people smile.  If I could somehow make people happier then I'd be doing something worthwhile.  Trouble was, the only person who was consistently around and game for subjecting themselves to public ridicule was myself.

I'm not a vain person, I'm not narcissistic and I'm not exactly a looker, but I'm at ease enough with myself to not worry about looking foolish.  I was interviewed on the radio once and the DJ said I had "a face for comedy" - I could be horribly offended by that and take it as people think my face looks funny, or I could roll with it and see it as an opportunity for better photos.

What has been the reception to the project so far?
In general, awesome.  I've built up a big following of people that look forward to my daily shots and I've had some truly humbling emails and comments from people.  If I let it all go to my head then I'd be an unbearable egotist, but in truth knowing that people are eager to see what I'll produce tomorrow and that I can make them occasionally spit coffee over their monitor is a great feeling.

I've even been recognised out in public by enthusiastic fans and have even met up with a few who probably thought I'm more interesting than I actually am.

Do you have an ultimate plan for these pictures - how do you see the project going forward?
Well, I'm definitely committed until the end of 2011 and I'm hoping that by then, the quality of my work will have improved yet further.  At the beginning of this year I took a 2 month sabbatical where I started writing a book.  It's complete enough to show people who might be interested in publishing it, but as of yet I haven't pushed it much and I've had no takers thus far.

If people are seeing this and want to read my book with a view to getting it published, I'd be more than happy to talk.  That said, I might just try turning it into an iPad App or something.

How important is the "character" behind the portraits, compared to the actual pictures themselves?
When I look at the stats behind which photos are popular, It's pretty clear to me that having a character telling a story makes for a more successful picture.  In fact, having a person in the photo at all is usually far better received than some artsy landscape or architecture picture.  I think you build up a following who like a particular type of photo, and for me that's clearly idiotic self-portraits, so when I post something different, they're invariably less interesting.

Where I just put some random clothes on and snap a few pictures, it can just feel like fancy dress.  In itself it's not very interesting.  If that character however is helping to tell some kind of little story, suddenly the picture is far more engaging.  For example, recently I dressed up as some kind of cowboy pilot, but the photo only got interesting when I added a giant explosion and an airborne cow to the background to imply that the character was using dynamite to rustle cows.  No longer fancy dress, now a story.

Follow Dominick on Flickr to  keep up to date with the project and to see more pictures from the series so far.