Some of you may know that one of my pet hates is Portraiture. I don’t know why, but I really don’t enjoy it, and the images I produce when I do try are fairly awful. Add to this the self-portrait and we are into a whole new order of magnitude of underachievement!

So, this week I took the bull by the horns. It’s because another group I’m in on Flickr, 52Themes2009, are having a Portrait theme this week. I’d been dreading it since I saw the list.

I set up a tripod in the bedroom and took down a mirror, so that I had a nice blue background and plenty of room to dash between the camera and my posing spot.

The first issue was to photograph a frame against the wall, not caring what was in it. Then I set about pulling faces in front of the camera through a piece of matte board – so that I could appear to be breaking out of the frame.

It took nearly 50 shots with me to-ing and fro-ing between the camera and my spot, checking pose and positioning of each, before I was half satisfied with the results.

Once I got things onto the computer, I chose a selection of faces and cropped them to the right size to fit in the frame I’d already taken. I chose a suitably horror-struck face for Day #532 and then I posted a small selection to Flickr, where one of my friends suggested putting together a montage of all the moods. So here it is, The Rogues Gallery. You can click the image to see it in all its glorious detail!

Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean I shall be posting Self Portraits left, right and centre anytime soon, but it has forced me out of my comfort zone for a bit, and that’s never a bad thing.