I mentioned earlier that it’s hard to photograph yourself. Actually it’s easy to photography yourself, it’s just hard to enjoy the results.

Looking at photos you take of yourself is just as hard to get used to as, for instance, hearing your own tape recorded voice.

Extra credit applies for

• the extra complications of working the camera
• framing the image (blind of course),
• composing the image,
• composing and posing yourself
• overcoming your surprise that you don’t look like you imagined
• getting over how almost everything looks bigger than you thought, including your tummy, neck, and that mole/scar/pimple/wrinkle/chipped fingernail
• getting over how everything that doesn’t look too big looks too small
• getting over the shock of seeing various naughty bits from all the “wrong” angles
• getting over worrying what other people would think
• getting over the shock of what your parents/children/co-workers would think

but most importantly

• getting over the impulse never, ever to do it again

The keys are to remember that

• the only thing that gets you past the “shock” factors is practice
• the only thing that gets you past the clumsiness factors is practice
• the only thing that gets you past the posing difficulties is practice
• the only thing that gets you past concentrating so much on the camera parts your arousal vanishes is practice

In other words, practice, practice, practice.

By the way, it’s totally fine to erase each photo the second you preview it until you get used to them. Once you get past that you’ll do fine, and a bit after that there’s a good chance you’ll discover it’s actually kind of fun and even arousing. The very fact that you’re looking at yourself as if it were through someone else’s eyes changes your self-perceptions in a positive way.

That’s the whole point of the exercise, by the way. Not as a way to turn on friends or strangers by showing yourself, but to learn to see yourself as others do in real life or would if you ever let them see a photo. No, you don’t have to show, or mail, post anything, obviously, and it’s perfectly fine to delete everything you ever take right after you look at them, but the exercise itself is a good experience.

One final note: Sometimes you can make lemons out of lemonade. What starts out as a very low-quality photo overall can still be cropped to good effect. I’m not sure how long I’ll leave these up, and they’re definitely not safe to browse at work and appropriate only for real of-age adults, but I rescued this and this from some very mediocre original shots. Eventually I got to a point where I could do something like this by propping the camera on a chair in low light and using the little timer dealie on the camera.

Update: If you do wind up with photos on your computer and you don’t ever want anyone else to know, then be sure you delete them when you’re done. Girl with a One Track Mind just posted an excellent case in point.

Update: TheGirl’s elderly father(!!!) discovered her incriminating photo while playing around with Google’s new Picassa PC photo indexing and editing tool. Two points:

• If you are going to fiddle around with your own photos it’s a nice editor and it will evidently find and index every photo on your computer.
• If you’re paranoid think of Picassa as a nice way to track down any wayward shots before someone else does.

Update: Self-portrait tips for (and from) the beginner: If you use the on-camera flash it’ll bleach and flatten parts you’d just as soon not see bleached and flattened. Instead try natural or indirect light. If you use natural or indirect light move slowly — the lower light lowers the shutter speed. Avoid direct sunlight as it too will tend to bleach you out — choose filtered light or wait for a cloudy day. For full-body photos figure out how the little timer dealie works on your camera (this helps reduce camera jiggle in low-light situations as well.) Finally, if you lean against a wall, lit only by light from another room, the light may ridiculously flatter your rather ordinary body.