Saturday, December 11, 2010

Here's looking at me, kid: Bad self-portraits from my last trip

My good friend Denise takes great pictures and has mastered the art of the arm-extended point-and-shoot self-portrait like no other. I took a stab at this genre on my last solo roadtrip through the deep south and found it took me many, many tries to get the "perfect" shot. And then I found that the shots I liked even more than the perfect ones were the truly awful, amateurish shots made on the way to the perfect ones. And so, without further ado and in the spirit of Saturday Night Live's Leonard Pinth-Garnell, I bring you...

A GALLERY OF BAD DEEP SOUTH ROADTRIP SELF-PORTRAITS

A cut-off face blocking a cut-off sign. Awful.

I didn't do too bad shooting the Alabama-Tennessee state line sign in this one, but at least I cut off my face awkwardly, as I did in these next two:



This was shot in Anniston, Alabama at the World's Biggest Office Chair which you can just barely see over my crudely shot shoulder.

Me, blurry and off-kilter, at Mammy's Cupboard, Natchez, Mississippi (and the photo's blurry and off-kilter, too).

The sign in the lower left corner says "Welcome to Louisiana" but you'd never know it in this terrible shot.

This one's so bad, I'm not sure what was supposed to be in the background.

Yep, that's my cheek and sunglasses at Oprah's home site in Koskiusko, Mississippi.

And last but not least: some roadside grass, a stop sign and half of my face. Appalling.

5 comments:

Fuzzygalore said...

:D I love this post!

Mostly because I can totally relate to it. I have a hideous collection of bad self portraits. After I see them I think - wow... how is it I'm not getting rocks thrown at me when i go out in public?

Thanks for not taking yourself too seriously! These were fun :)

Gunnar and Sherry said...

Thanks Fuzzy! I think there should be a bad self-portrait museum. Let's start one!

Bill said...

Some faces truly belong on the back end of the camera... mine included!

Gunnar and Sherry said...

I've got a face made for radio, too, Bill!

Unknown said...

Hey, thanks for the plug! Your self portraits are so fun! What a great post - this should be a regular feature!