In my opinion, it doesn’t matter what kind of photographer you are, whether you're a commercial photographer, a portrait photographer, a fashion photographer or even a hobbyist photographer, I would always recommend working on personal projects.

When you work in the photography industry, especially in advertising, you can often find yourself working to someone else’s brief. An art director or client has an idea and you work together to help them realise that idea to promote a brand, product or service. It’s a collaboration but the original idea usually starts with someone else. So it’s important, as a creative, to find the time for personal projects to create work that is exactly that... ‘personal’. Work that YOU’RE passionate about, work that is inspired by YOUR ideas and YOUR interests and not necessarily with anyone else, even the end viewer, in mind.

I have found so many benefits to working on personal projects. A Personal project can give you direction and motivation and can give you a chance to experiment technically and creatively, maybe even in a completely different medium than photography (I write, I sketch and I am always trying to create in some way!). They are a great way to stay inspired and challenge yourself to grow as a photographer and a creative. It doesn’t matter whether a project lasts a day, a year or a lifetime, if you have a theme or an idea that sparks your creativity, the time limits are up to you.

As a professional photographer, I’m always working on personal projects alongside my commercial work. Some of these you may have seen and some may never see the light of day, but I always make time and try and push myself to keep growing as a creative. I guess in some ways the blog has become a personal project. It’s keeping me accountable and giving me direction every week to be creative and come up with interesting subjects to write about, like this very one on the importance of ‘Personal Projects’.

With all that in mind I figured I would talk about one of my favourites, and at times challenging, personal projects that I have done to date, the ‘Selfie Twat’ project!

I photograph people! It’s what I love to shoot! What I don’t love… are pictures of me! So therein lies the challenge! With the ‘Selfie Twat’ project I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone. Personally, by challenging my own sense of ego I guess and creatively give myself a chance to explore different ideas and concepts to produce a series of creative self-portraits. 12 to be precise, one for every month of the year.

Each image represents a feeling, an idea, a passion or an emotion about, or from me! Each one was a challenge in it’s own way whether to come up with the idea/concept or in the execution, but here they are!

I have included all 12 of them for you to check out and I have given them each a small caption to give you a little clue about what the hell was going on in my brain at the time of creating them!

JANUARY - YOU CAN'T HIDE BEHIND THE CAMERA!

I would disagree with the title obviously ha ha! There is always a way if you’re creative! It was the first one, give me a break! So I still managed to hide behind a camera, but I prefer to say that I maintained an air of mystery ha ha! The very first in the series! Started simple! Studio shoot, on my own with the timer remote attached to the camera.

FEBRUARY - LOVE HURTS!

Which one is me you’re asking? I’m the one in the balloon suit, but I forgive you for your confusion ha ha! February, Valentines Day, Love is in the air… Well, in my creative brain, love with a hint of darkness. I wanted to create something more conceptual after the simplicity of the first image in January.

MARCH - TECHNICALLY TRAPPED?

I think we all feel trapped in our phones sometimes, especially with social media at the forefront of everyone’s minds it seems these days. So why not shoot yourself trapped in your phone! Simple retouch together of a couple of shots right? Kind of in the sense that I had to shoot the portrait of myself separately, but this final image was all shot in camera. I shot the portrait of me pressed against a piece of glass in the studio. I then sent that digital file to my phone to be displayed on the screen. I blacked out the studio, used a single soft box to light the phone and used a long exposure to allow the image to be exposed correctly on the phone screen. Simple but then there was no need for any major fixing afterwards!

APRIL - MESSED UP!

This is as the title suggests. I had a whole complex idea in my head and it wasn’t coming together due to time constraints and other jobs. I was frustrated and angry at myself as I had wasted a lot of time trying to pull it together. It was getting towards the end of April and I was hadn’t created anything, adding to my frustration. I decided to go back to Photography 101, long and double exposures, to create something much more abstract that showed that frustration and anger at myself for not meeting my own high creative standards.

MAY - THE TRACKS OF MY TEARS

Tracks of my Tears - Smokey Robinson & The MIracles. One of my favourite songs! My birthday month! I was sad about getting older maybe ha ha shall we just leave it there!? This was great fun to shoot though. I enlisted the help of a talented MUA, Katy Bird (https://www.katybird.co.uk) to help create the dark clown look (face scars and all), and we shot in a small, run down function room of a very, very local English pub who were happy for us to make some mess.

JUNE - JUST DID IT!

England were playing football in one of the major tournaments this month. I thought I would look back at one of my favourite sports campaigns, and pay homage to the famous shot of Wayne rooney by Nick Georghiou for the ‘Make it count’ Nike Campaign. A massive advertising campaign that I remember thinking was very cool at the time. I think it might have even been banned. Once again I roped in MUA Katy Bird to create the warpaint look and kept it simple like the original shot and tried to evoke a little English pride! If you don’t know the original shot then have a Google.

JULY - WISH YOU WERE HERE...

Maybe I was listening to too much Pink Floyd this month, but like them I wanted to experiment a little. I have always been influenced by music and album artwork so I thought I would try my hand at my own ‘album cover’. Look out for a future release date! Just kidding! On a deeper level I had had enough of being in the selfies a little by this time. Trying to work out how you want to represent yourself in an image is hard, there are so many layers to a person that it can be challenging, especially when you are exploring them in yourself. I wanted to try represent these layers to ‘a personality’ and more specifically ‘MY personality’ in this image. It’s confusing right ha?

AUGUST - TREE HUGGER

In fairness, I am a bit of a ‘tree hugging hippy’ and love being in nature whenever I can (probably a result of spending so long in dark studios). I knew the perfect area of trees that I wanted to use, and off I went ‘Tree Hugging’! Interestingly the trees were in quite a busy dog walking location, it turned out! I am not sure I what people must have been thinking as they watched me set up the tripod, with my trusty timer remote, place a small ladder against a tree, take my t-shirt off and the proceed to repeatedly hug this tree in various positions and at various heights!

SEPTEMBER - STILL A TWAT!

For the first time wanted to try and show the ‘real’ me, no balloons, no paint, no masks, no gimmicks, just a simple portrait. Just me in that moment but also me reflecting and thinking back on the start of my photography journey (referenced by holding my first camera. The Praktica that was given to me by my stepfather that I mentioned in a previous blog). But yeah… Still a twat!

OCTOBER - BATTERED & BRUISED!

Anyone that knows me knows that I am all about continuous improvement. None of us are finished articles and we should always set ourselves new challenges. This image represents a challenge away from photography that I had set myself. For a few months I had been challenging myself physically and mentally. I was training to complete a British Combat Association registered instructors course in Israeli Combat Systems. ICS is a defensive combat system, if you have heard of Krav Maga, it’s similar! When the chance to join the instructors course came up it was one of those ‘say yes’ now moments and think logically about it later, and by then it was too late! This was one of the hardest things I have ever put myself through but also one of the most rewarding. I passed and once I got my certificate and qualification I never wanted to have anyone try and punch me in the face or attack me with a knife/gun again! There were lots of injuries and bruises etc in real life but for the sake of this image Katy Bird, MUA got involved and did some cool SFX makeup.

NOVEMBER - SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Not everything we see on our screens and magazines etc is ‘real’. The majority of images people show to the outside world these days are often filtered or retouched in some way or another. Mine included. I will say though, it is always the goal to only do what’s necessary for a shot. Photoshop and retouching get a bad wrap but should only be used to enhance an image, not to change people’s perception of reality! It’s a very strange feeling retouching your own face! Seeing every imperfection and flaw in minute detail is uncomfortable and with this project I have got a taste of what it must be like to be a model. Not as easy as you might think!

DECEMBER - RELATIVELY NEWTON

‘Any photographer who says he’s not a voyeur is either stupid or a liar!’ - Helmut Newton. Helmut Newton is one of my all time favourite photographers and someone I studied a lot for my photography degree (way back when). For the final portrait in the ‘Selfie Twat’ series I explored my own voyeurism as a photographer to a certain degree and I wanted to create a scene that depicted that. I selected the final image as it felt like perhaps there was a another layer yet again? Another possible voyeur, watching the voyeur?

In a time when we are so used to seeing the conventional ‘selfie’ saturating our screens The ‘Selfie Twat’ project allowed me to explore multiple ideas and techniques of photography but also forced me to look at myself and who I am a little more and my idea of ‘self’ through images. Self-reflection and self-study is key to this idea of continuous improvement for me. I found it creative, weird, cathartic and empowering all at the same time and I would encourage any creative reading this to embark on your own personal projects for all the reasons I have also stated. The subject doesn’t matter, the medium doesn’t matter as long as it is personal to you and it feeds your soul!

Thank you once again for taking the time to check out the blog! Long one again this time dissecting all those images but I hope that it might give you a little more of an insight into me as a creative photographer. I would love to know which images are your favourites and why. Feel free to get in touch and say hello and I hope that you have enjoyed the blog and if you haven’t then why not suggest a topic for me to discuss in the future. See you next time!