Favorite photos of myself

About 4 years ago - I think that it was on New Year's Eve - I briefly dropped by a party with some family friends. One of the friends at the party was a very skilled amateur photographer.

Our friend decided that he wanted to do a project where he would photograph everyone's eyes at the party. After he snapped a couple quick shots of my face, I said goodbye and excitedly headed off to meet up with my date - one of the very first dates with B., who I have been with ever since.

I absolutely love the resulting photos (below.) The lighting is incredibly flattering and the photos are crisp, but moreover, I love how the photo captured the joy and anticipation of finding someone that I was crazy about - and vice versa. Our family friend passed away recently, so I also treasure these photos of a reminder of what a nice man he was and how well he was able to capture the spark and personality of his subjects.
(As you can see, I've cropped one of the pictures to use as my current YLF profile pic.)

What are your favorite photos that anyone has ever taken of you?

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20 Comments

  • Alecia replied 4 months ago

    What a lovely story, Kari. I'm sorry for your loss. I don't have any pictures off the top of my head that are favorites. Something to think about.

  • MaryK replied 4 months ago

    Kari, those are beautiful! I can really see why you love them so much!

    Strangely enough, I think the best photo anybody ever took of me was a black-and-white passport photo of me back in the mid-70s when I was 16. Back then you had to go to a professional photographer for that kind of thing and it just turned out fantastically well. I'll have to see if I still have it around here somewhere...

  • Transcona Shannon replied 4 months ago

    What a touching story Kari and the result is a beautiful photo of you that you treasure for the memories it brings back.

    My favourite photo is probably not the most flattering but it's one my hubby took three days before I went into labour with our son and I'm out standing in our neighbour's flax field with all the blue flowers of the flax blooming and I'm absolutely HUGE but it just captured a really nice moment.

  • Kari replied 4 months ago

    MaryK, you lucked out - wow!
    I recently had to get new passport photos and they are HORRIBLE. It barely even looks like me!

    Shannon, what a neat memory. The setting sounds beautiful and so symbolic of new life blooming!

  • ironkurtin replied 4 months ago

    I think my favorite photos are of me when I was younger. I wish someone had told me back then how cute I was.

  • Kari replied 4 months ago

    I hear you. Heck, I wish present-day me could go back to the insecure, teenage me and tell myself that I am beautiful, not the gangly, blotchy, awkward person I thought I was. I'm not sure I would have believed myself anyway, though.

  • CocoLion replied 4 months ago

    Love the photo and your story Kari!

    My brother took this picture of me when I was 27 with a large format camera.

  • Kari replied 4 months ago

    CocoLion, that is *amazing* - what an arresting image! I love your dark eyes.

  • CocoLion replied 4 months ago

    Thanks Kari! I was against this photo shoot. My younger brother was in art school, and he had borrowed the large format camera. Now I'm so glad he took the pictures. I did smokey eyes ... I love that I still had *a little* bit of lips back then, upper lip being gone now! : D

  • Amy replied 4 months ago

    What a nice story, Kari! I LOVE your friend's idea and the results are lovely. I'm sorry to hear he passed away. It's good to have something like this to remind you about a very special person.

    When I first got my DSLR, I drove everyone nuts by taking pictures of everyone every waking moment of their lives (and some while they were sleeping). Eventually, the only willing subject I had left was myself, so I started a self-portrait project. Even though the model could have been more interesting, i.e. NOT ME, this project resulted in some of my favorite photographs. You can see them on flickr:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/q.....702560652/

  • Mochi replied 4 months ago

    Amy, you've done modeling, right? The camera loves you. Kari, how lively and pretty your eyes are in those pics. Cocolion, such a striking, luminous shot of you.

    I like these two recent pics of myself (which I took). There are no pics of me from post-college, through my thirties, and until fairly recently that I like. I've only recently become more and more okay, even happy, with being in front of a camera. Extremely late bloomer.

  • bj1111 replied 4 months ago

    love.this.thread.

    you are all such beautiful women.

  • Amy replied 4 months ago

    CocoLion, that wide format portrait is a real work of art and you are incredibly beautiful.

    Mochi, it's too bad you hid from the camera all that time! You look absolutely lovely in both those photos.

    I'm laughing, though, because I never modeled...not even close. In fact, I felt horribly mousy for most of my life. Now that I'm on the verge of being 40, I have grown into my looks. I love clowning around and creating stories in pictures, so I enjoy using my camera for that.

  • Kari replied 4 months ago

    Amy, no wonder your WIW photos turn out so wonderfully. You are immensely skilled at self-portraits. (What kind of camera are you using? I dream of buying a DSLR!) Mochi's right - the camera loves your face!

    Mochi, I'm glad that you are now comfortable in front of the camera. You are absolutely lovely. I also adore your cascading curls. (Straight-haired-girl envy here!)

  • Kari replied 4 months ago

    And to BJ's point - thank you all for sharing your stories and photos, too. That's kind of the unspoken point I'd hoped to get at - focusing on the images that make us feel confident and recognize our beauty. I'm hyper-critical of how I appear in most photos, and these are my favorite not only because they are quite flattering, but because they focus on my eyes (my favorite feature on myself & on other people) and really capture the joy of the moment. I focus on the memory of the day, not the negativity I sometimes feel toward my photographed appearance.

  • Amy replied 4 months ago

    I love her curls too, Kari!

    I have a very old Canon DSLR. It doesn't have a lot of the fancy features the newer models have, but it works for me. I do invest more in the lenses though :)

  • Mo replied 4 months ago

    I like the pic inside a locket the BF gave me the first year or two we were dating. The pic in it is of him giving it to me. The way the picture is fastened is with stars, so we kinda have stars in our eyes lol. I wore it today, and opened it up at the hockey game out of the blue to share with him, interestingly enough. Haven't done that in at least 5 years.

  • annagybe replied 4 months ago

    Amy, I LOVE your mug shot! Absolutely brilliant. I have to dig it up but my Dad took a good picture of me in front of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. I rarely photograph well, I really think I look better in person.

  • Kari replied 4 months ago

    Mo, that is adorable. How long have you been together, again? B. really touched me this year by giving me a multi-photo frame for Christmas with some really adorable pictures of the two of us together over the years (we've been dating for 4); he knew I'd really wanted more photos of us up around the apartment and it was a sweet thought.

    Anna, I think you're too hard on yourself. Even in your self-photographed WIW shots, your lovely eyes come through - though they're certainly more vibrant in person!
    http://youlookfab.com/upload/i....._image.jpg
    http://youlookfab.com/upload/i....._image.jpg

    At the Toronto YLF meetup a lot of us were commenting on how we see a different side to each other's beauty face-to-face than we do in flat, 2-d photographs.

  • Mo replied 4 months ago

    Thanks Kari! We have been dating 10 years and some change, but hanging out, going to the casinos, to hear music, dancing, whatever for 5 or 6 years before that. You know, where you crash on your friend's couch rather than catch an expensive cab home because you know each other that well? An eternity I guess lol!
    I did the photo collage with pics of us for him for a gift - I agree it's a lovely gesture.

    Your pic is fabulous, as is the story of the photographer behind it. I have a similar pic - my stepdad took of me for an entrance in a photo contest in the Ventura County Fair. He won with it, which is cool. So I like that photo as well. He has also recently passed :(

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