Putting myself in the picture

Putting myself in the picture

Yesterday’s lockdown hair selfie had led me to reflect on photographers in front of the camera – not least because of the number of members of this site who (to put it bluntly) really don’t like being photographed.

To some extent, I can understand this coming from a landscape photographer, or a still life specialist. But for those of us who make a habit of photographing other people, whether they are models or people in the street, this smacks of hypocrisy. We expect others to be in our pictures, but object to being in theirs… Why?

But I’m not going into the negatives. This article is about the positives of deliberately swapping sides of the lens, because there are a number of good reasons why you should make a point of stepping in front of someone else’s camera. And no sooner had I decided to write about this than I got a text from my daughter-in-law asking me to take her picture, and providing a reason for it.



Emma’s a wedding photographer, and has been spending time working on her website while there are no weddings to photograph. So reason one for wanting to be in front of a camera – because you need to be seen to be taking pictures. It’s for publicity, to promote yourself as a photographer.

But there are reasons why you should get round there anyway. There’s the leadership thing – that you should not ask anyone else to do something that you wouldn’t do yourself. Remember the time you went to the Lads and Dads weekend with the Cubs, and Arkela wouldn’t go down the deathslide – and how everyone’s attitude shifted just a little bit? You need to show willing!

Another side of leadership-with-a-camera is the importance of being prepared to look silly in the cause of getting a good picture. Anyone who stands on their dignity loses a bit of credibility in the eyes of the people they are working with, especially if they are asking others to be silly…

And then there’s the internal stuff, the understanding of being asked to drop one shoulder a little, or being told to turn to face the camera more. If receiving instructions doesn’t appeal to you, maybe there’s a reason to think harder about how you offer guidance to your own models… You will learn about the communication involved, and you may pick up a bit of camera technique along the way.



There can be a trade advantage, as well. I know a number of models who have taken up photography on their own account, and many have creative ideas that require willing subjects. If they’ve been good to you, you should be good to them. It doesn’t matter that they are stunningly good-looking and you’re not: this can be about character. I’ve stood on one leg on kitchen steps holding an umbrella like Mary Poppins and admired an oil painting alongside a unicorn in the interests of art.

Ah, yes. If you value creativity, why not be part of somebody else’s project? Again, it’s only fair, and even if you contribute to something utterly outside your own field of interest, there’s value to it: someone else is producing what they want to make and be proud of: and you may broaden your horizons (as I did, literally, wearing a suit in a bath on the seafront at Hunstanton…)



And one final thought – your family may actually want to have pictures of you! So many of us have the material for a family album with a gap in it, and the gap is us. It’s easier to understand why this is a problem if you’ve ever seen the family pictures of someone who has carefully excised themselves from every image with scissors – it looks like an act of vandalism, and almost of cruelty to others, however honourable the intentions.

And you may even end up with a picture of yourself that you (and your family) like...

Pictures of me © Emma Duder of Doodah Designs. Picture of Emma at work by me.