Guest Artist: Catherine Auger

INTERVIEW BY JESSICA DROSSIN

In addition to being an amazing artist and Beautiful World Member, Catherine is one of the five lovely ladies who help me manage the group as a Moderator. She's a mom, a filmmaker, an actor, and one of the kindest and most creative people I know. We are lucky enough to have Catherine share her editing steps on one of her fine art self-portrait edits. Enjoy the free video tutorial where you can watch Catherine as she transforms one of her self portraits to fit her conceptual vision.

Hello there, I'm Catherine. I like taking pictures of myself.

It wasn't always that way. 10 years ago when I started, I enjoyed taking pictures of nature and my kids. Then I shifted into family and individual portraiture. Suddenly I caught the conceptual photography bug and started working with models. But I thought, why not use myself? It would be good practice and I can use me whenever I need to. Then I realized I could shoot and edit with zero constraints when I did self portraiture, and that's when things really started to get fun! It felt so great to be free and really explore things about myself, my thoughts, and what I wanted to express. It has become very therapeutic for me and I'm so glad I went down this path. Self portraiture certainly feels like a daunting task at first. And there can be many mental blocks keeping you from even wanting to try. My advice is to start small and simple and build from there.

Maybe you don't love pictures of yourself.

Try doing a self portrait with just your hands, or somehow keeping your face out of it, or make it blurry. Maybe the technicality of it seems scary. Getting a remote, either wired or wireless, is a lot less stressful for me to work with than the camera's timer mode. Using a vacuum or extra tripod or something to be a place holder is a simple fix for finding your focus if you're working with a timer or wireless remote. Maybe you just have no idea what to even do in your self portrait.

There are lots of ways to come up with concepts. What inspires you? Nature, music, objects, colors, clothes, jewelry, random props are all good starting places. If you want to portray a feeling or tell a story, using symbols of those is helpful. Perhaps you want to portray feeling trapped. What represents trapped to you? A cage, a box, an empty room, a blanket, a rope, or something else. Find something you want to focus on and make that what your photo is all about. Don't be afraid to fail and don't be afraid to take a bazillion photos. When I first started I took around 200-300 to get one that I liked. Now that I have a lot more practice, I can usually get it in 10-50 shots depending on the complexity. And don't be too tied to getting certain results. Sometimes we get mad at ourselves for not getting it exactly the way we envisioned. But allowing ourselves to be open to whatever ends up happening in the picture can yield some amazing, unexpected, and interesting results that we might love even more than what our brain thought would be best. So go for it. You never know what awesome things you'll discover!

And in case you wanted to know anything else about me, well, I've been married 16 years, have 2 kids, 2 dogs, some chickens, a degree in Economics, an unhealthy amount of hobbies, and a deep love for chocolate.