As an artist, I’m learning to appreciate the importance of pursuing personal projects in addition to doing client work. Shooting for myself keeps me disciplined and keeps the creative juices flowing. It also brings me back to the reason I love photography. For 2013, I’ve committed to three different personal projects. I introduced the first project last month — the monthly Letters to our Children blog circle that I’m participating in. The other two projects I’m doing this year are a monthly self-portrait, and a monthly family portrait (of me & my family, with me in the photo!).
I’m so excited to announce that my January self-portrait was selected to be featured on the Clickin Moms blog, alongside a handful of self-portraits from a bunch of incredibly talented women. We were each awarded the Editors’ Choice award for Creative Excellence. You can check out the blog post here.
It’s funny because I wasn’t informed by Clickin Moms that my photo was selected for their blog. I found out about it when my friend posted in a Facebook group to announce that 3 of us gals from Seattle were featured on the blog! Then a few hours later, I learned that Clickin Moms had shared my photo on their Facebook page to promote the blog post. That’s when the real fun began! Since Clickin Moms has over 145,000 followers on Facebook, my photo was seen by a lot of people. All told, it received over 1,300 likes, 160 comments, and was shared 100 times.
I’m so completely humbled by the responses my photo received. These are words that were used to describe my photo:
Beautiful. Powerful. Inspiring. “For once, a REAL photo!”
“Another twin mom here. I had my boys 2 months ago and struggle with my appearance now. This photo is beautiful and really puts things into perspective.”
And this, from fellow photographer Katrina Gotschall who I so respect & admire, “A true testament to what a mother goes through for the love of her children. We tattoo our bodies to illustrate our personalities, and yet so many are ashamed by the tattoos that organically illustrate our journey to motherhood. Thank you for being so brave and showing us how beautiful those natural tattoos are. They tell a story we should all be proud of.”
My photo is entitled “Worth the stretch marks”. When I came up with the concept for the photo, I really just wanted to tell the tale of being a mom of multiples. To show my stretch marks, and have the babies in the photo with me as an explanation for the stretch marks. To show the change in my body but also the sweet and priceless treasure that are my twins. Somehow not including my face made it easier to bare my skin. If you read the blog post, it mentions chopping off your head as one way to make a self-portrait “unconventional”. While I never intended for anyone beyond the CM forum to see the photo, and certainly not anyone I know in real life, I’m so glad that the photo helped some women see their body in a different light. And I learned that there is another term for stretch marks — tiger stripes! I feel so blessed everyday to have these kids in my life, and so proud to be a tiger mama who earned her stripes. 🙂
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