Seriously, What Is the Real Motivator Behind Shooting Selfies?

Arkitect

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*Shrug*

Define "Selfie".

I do take a photo of myself – of my husband — or of us together — on occasion. It is a self-portrait, sure not done in oils or tempera or chalk… but it defines a moment, a memory of a place and time.

See, it started a long time ago, when I was travelling in the 70s…80s…90s by myself I would ask someone to take a photo of me.
Show them how to focus the SLR and keep my fingers crossed they would get me in focus.
And then wait 3 months before seeing the photo.
Now with my iPhone I can do that myself. *click* and move on.

And why not? There I am at the Great Pyramid; the temples at Paestum; Angkor Wat (before it became a tourist trap!)… I treasure those photos.
Looking at them decades later, they make me smile. They make me wonder about myself. The person I was then… seeing the freshness, seeing the now lined and wrinkly visage.

iPhone in hand I'll snap myself if I am alone and I am travelling somewhere that I want to capture.

Do I display them on my Instagram? Nope.
Do I stand and pout my lips and pretend I am some super model? Nope.
Am I a very late 50s, pale male with thinning hair and a spare tire? Yes.

Vanity has sweet fuck all to do with it. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Do I care what other people think about that? Nope.

"Selfie"
Hagia Sofia, Istanbul, December 2021

IMG_4785.jpeg
 
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SuperMatt

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*Shrug*

Define "Selfie".

I do take a photo of myself – of my husband — or of us together — on occasion. It is a self-portrait, sure not done in oils or tempera or chalk… but it defines a moment, a memory of a place and time.

See, it started a long time ago, when I was travelling in the 70s…80s…90s by myself I would ask someone to take a photo of me.
Show them how to focus the SLR and keep my fingers crossed they would get me in focus.
And then wait 3 months before seeing the photo.
Now with my iPhone I can do that myself. *click* and move on.

And why not? There I am at the Great Pyramid; the temples at Paestum; Angkor Wat (before it became a tourist trap!)… I treasure those photos.
Looking at them decades later, they make me smile. They make me wonder about myself. The person I was then… seeing the freshness, seeing the now lined and wrinkly visage.

iPhone in hand I'll snap myself if I am alone and I am travelling somewhere that I want to capture.

Do I display them on my Instagram? Nope.
Do I stand and pout my lips and pretend I am some super model? Nope.
Am I a very late 50s, pale male with thinning hair and a spare tire? Yes.

Vanity has sweet fuck all to do with it. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Do I care what other people think about that? Nope.

"Selfie"
Hagia Sofia, Istanbul, December 2021

How vain am I!? 🙄
View attachment 12403
My father didn’t believe in wasting film on shots of the tourist sites unless we were in the photos. He said “If you want a picture of that cathedral, buy the postcard. The picture will be better anyway.” It was all about getting friends/family in the shots.
 

ericwn

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My father didn’t believe in wasting film on shots of the tourist sites unless we were in the photos. He said “If you want a picture of that cathedral, buy the postcard. The picture will be better anyway.” It was all about getting friends/family in the shots.

Certainly one way to go about things, I can see the logic, focussing on the social aspects and creating and capturing memories together . It’s of course entirely different than the selfie motivation in my opinion that’s solely intended to make people feed their social media profiles with countless “I am doing xyz” statements.
 

Clix Pix

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Exactly, Eric! Sure, in the old days and currently people do take photos of themselves and/or the family while on vacation, especially in a place to which they may never return, and that's fine. My objection is to the current-day inundation of pointless selfies on social media, day after day after day. To me that IS vain and narcissistic. Why would anyone even think that other people would want to see their every activity every day? Why would I care what so-and-so had to eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner and/or that they went to the mall and bought more stuff that they probably don't need?

Unfortunately the selfie thing has spilled over into other sites as well, not confined to social media.

Rest assured, folks, I will never inflict images of myself on innocent bystanders....
 
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Clix Pix

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I am beginning to get more than a little irritated with how someone is using the popular and long-running POTD thread at the other site to post their weekly "selfie," as apparently they're in some sort of group which requires participants to post a selfie one day each week... That's fine, that FB or Instagram group can do what it wants, but I really wish that the member of that group, who also happens to be on MR, wouldn't also inflict those weekly selfies on those of us in the POTD thread, too! I am sure that when iGary years ago first initiated the POTD thread people posting selfies in there was not part of his overall concept....
 

mollyc

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I am beginning to get more than a little irritated with how someone is using the popular and long-running POTD thread at the other site to post their weekly "selfie," as apparently they're in some sort of group which requires participants to post a selfie one day each week... That's fine, that FB or Instagram group can do what it wants, but I really wish that the member of that group, who also happens to be on MR, wouldn't also inflict those weekly selfies on those of us in the POTD thread, too! I am sure that when iGary years ago first initiated the POTD thread people posting selfies in there was not part of his overall concept....


Well, frankly, I am beginning to get more than a little irritated finding you posting about me on a non-MR forum AGAIN. With as many people who have TA linked in their MR forums, did you really think I wouldn’t be a member here? First with the Lensbaby hate, and now with this.


First of all, I don’t have to explain any of my photos to you. The MR POTD thread is open to all members, to post whatever photo they want each day. I may not have been part of the forum in 2006 when the first thread was started by iGary, but reading through the initial thread and many of his comments, I actually find it difficult that he’d be offended by anything I have ever posted. The only thing he seemed adamant about was posting the date and location of the photo.

Thought it would be fun to share one of your best every day - doesn't matter what it is, just as long as it is decent (no nudes or overly graphic shots). You can add a picture everyday as long as it is different.

It does not matter when the picture was taken, as long as you only post ONE SINGLE IMAGE per day. Make sure to post a date, location and description.



It “doesn’t matter what it is.” His direct words. For years you have been trying to gatekeep the POTD thread: no cats, no meals, no mundane tasks, no Lensbaby, “serious” photos only, the list goes on. Which is pretty ironic, because if we are going by the standards of the original iGary threads, on the first page, there is a true computer selfie, on the second a cat, an ape eating sh*t, and a very unappetizing photo of a pineapple upside down cake. One would hardly call those “serious photos” and yet Gary never once complained about them.

So, given that you are “from a different generation and curious” I will give you some answers. Admittedly, I know you will disagree with everything I write, well, because you just will; others in this thread have astutely pointed out that the initial tone and delivery would dissuade someone from chiming in who might have experience. You don’t actually scare me, even though you badmouth me when you think I won’t find out (seriously, if you are going to do so, at least do it in private messages, like I do when I complain about you. Have some tact).

The photos I post on the POTD thread are not in fact, selfies. They are self portraits. The article you link to in your first post even defines a selfie “as when an individual holds a camera or smartphone at arm’s length and takes a picture of their face.” Almost any article you read about selfies will make this distinction. I am not sitting on a ledge or hanging out of a train with my phone in the air, jumping off a bridge with a bungee cord and a gopro to document some sort of daredevil activity to get likes. And frankly, somewhere in the middle of this thread I thought that had been agreed upon, until you brought me up while mentioning my weekly “selfies.” That you used the word in quotes tells me you know that you are wrong in that, but that you wanted to disparage me all the same.

I made some goals for myself at the beginning of the year; I prefer these to resolutions. Some were personal, some were photographic. One of which was to take a self portrait once a month. My own goal. For me. Not for anyone else. Not for a group, for Instagram, or Facebook. As it turns out, I fell into the habit of doing one once a week instead, and so I’ve stuck with that.

Why a self portrait? Does that make me vain, conceited, self-aggrandizing?

No, actually, it makes me a “victim” (a term I use very loosely) of circumstance in that my children are older, out of the house at school and sports and social events. If I want to practice portraiture and lighting or other techniques, guess who is the only person in the house?

But what are the larger effects of taking and posting self portraits?

  • I am pushing myself creatively, shooting in a manner that is difficult on a technical and artistic basis; posing and focus (particularly with manual focus lenses) are much more difficult on oneself than when directing others
  • I am teaching my children that I am worthy of value for something more than just being a mom, a chauffeur, a person who reminds them to clean their rooms and do their homework.
  • I am writing my own narrative in the world; my life is my own story to be told, not what the world tells me it should be
  • I am showing the photography world that there is more to the female form than scantily clad twenty-somethings in whacked out lighting all in the name of “art”
  • I am owning my own middle age, rebelling against the Hollywood image of botox and unnecessary plastic surgery. I might be more stretched out than I was 20 years ago, but I am real and human and worthy all the same
  • I am opening myself to criticism of my work and my body; people seem to say things about a self portrait that they never would about a portrait of “someone else”
  • I am confronting my own fears about aging
  • I am setting a positive role model for my teenage daughter, and also have open dialogues with her on how to approach my current photo


I assure you I am not taking and posting weekly for likes or praise or anything else. I take them for myself and I post them to hold myself accountable. I barely pay attention to likes on IG as it is, but I do know that my self-portraits typically get fewer likes than my macro images. But the IG algorithm isn’t particularly good, and I place zero of my self worth on how many likes any of my images get. I just post there out of habit and to connect with other photographers.

I am creating a legacy for my children. I know you don’t have children of your own, but you speak often of your mother. My own parents are in their mid-80s and I would give just about anything to have more photos of them. Of my mom working in the kitchen, doing mundane tasks, making dinner, combing my hair. Of my father tending to his apple orchard, cutting the grass. So many memories in my head that I would love to have on printed paper. I suspect any photos you have of your mother are precious to you, the way you write about her. I have a very good relationship with my children; when I am dying or dead, they won’t care a lick about the thousands of flower photos I have taken, but they will search for the ones of me and of their father, to find photos of their rooms, and what cars we drive.

Of all that “stuff” you claim to hate to see because it’s “people showing themselves doing something not-so-special on pretty much a daily basis? Just as bad as sharing photos of one's breakfast, lunch or dinner on a daily basis. What makes someone think that anyone else would really care?” No, maybe no one really cares right now, but these photos we take, of us “doing stuff” become historical as time goes on; they spell out fashion and home decorating trends, of restaurants that will no longer be, of the house where one spent their childhood, where the foundation of their lives were built. That you can’t identify with someone’s lunch doesn’t make it less significant to that photographer. And you don’t have the right or the power to tell someone their work is “less than” because you dislike it on a personal basis. I look back at my own childhood memories of our crazy blue carpet and my 1970s pajamas…all that nostalgia comes flooding back. People taking photos today are creating that nostalgia for future generations.

My own parents enjoy getting photos of me. My father is sometimes taken aback by how much I remind him of his mother; unfortunately she died long before I was born, but I have seen photos of her and her own mother and it is uncanny how I resemble them.

My self portraits are not particularly brave or creative. I have no illusions that I will one day be discovered as an “artist.” I am not looking to do a gallery showing of my work, nature, self portraits, or otherwise. But why take photos at all if not to share them? And if my work on any given day happens to be a self portrait, then guess what goes on the POTD thread?

Social media has both good and bad aspects. The good thing is that it’s pretty easy to dial in what you want to see. And if you aren’t even on Instagram, then what do you care who posts what? And honestly, if my photos truly irritate you so much, then why not just put me on Ignore? Wouldn’t that be the most adult thing to do?

In the future, if you would like to discuss my work, I would really appreciate it if you would just approach me directly. Or do it privately with a trusted friend. But posting about me on multiple public message boards just makes you look very bitter and critical.
 

r.harris1

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This is quite literally one of my favorite photos ever, for personal reasons. It’s not “technically great”. It’s just a quickie on an iPhone from almost 10 years ago. My wife had discovered the concept of “selfie” on a trip she took by herself to the UK in 2013. She was in a pub in Winchester with stuffed birds and other animals and she is joyous. She is such a lovely person and I treasure this immensely. She’s not being narcissistic or anything like it. She’s sharing her joy at being in a place she loves. She hates tech, she hates iPhones with a passion so she doesn’t fit the mold. Everyone’s unique.
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