Birthday Self portraits
For more than a decade, now, I’ve done a round of self portraits on my birthday. I take as many self portraits as the age I’m turning that day. This year, fifty freaking eight self portraits on the occasion of my fifty-eighth birthday.
A couple things. It takes all day at this point, and I see it’s getting harder. Some of the pictures I take are repeats from year to year (like the first picture of the day taken in my bed when I first wake up) and that’s deliberate. That said, part of what I’m trying to do is to use this as a creative exercise and push past what I’ve done before and see what else I can get, see what new ideas I can come up with. This year, I wanted to include other people so I texted a few friends, and then some folks I just ran into as I was walking around near my office.
As I’ve said from previous years when I have posted this project, who knows how long I’ll do this, but here’s something I do know—I love working on this project, and I’m grateful I had another year in me.
Here are all 58 images from this year. And if you want to see how this played out in previous versions, here’s where you can see how it went in 2017, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024.
Click any image to view it larger. That’s my recommendation on how to view these.
Birthday self portraits
Yesterday, on my birthday, I did what I’ve been doing on my birthday for at least ten years. I took as many self portraits as the age I turned. This year I’m 56, so I took 56 self portraits. It’s hard (for me) thinking up that many new pictures every time, so there are some repeated ideas from previous years. But there is something new. This year I wanted to ask strangers if they’d be in a picture. So, there’s some strangers in this year’s self portraits, and some familiar faces with friends. This might be my favorite year, yet. Every year, I wonder if this is the last year I’ll do this. I don’t know. I guess we’ll cross that bridge a year from now. For now, I’ll be glad I had the time to do this again.
Click any image to view it larger
If you want to see previous years, here are the images from the following ages:
Birthday self portraits
For eleven years now, I’ve done this project. Since age 44, I started taking self portraits on my birthday. I take as many portraits as the age that I’m turning. So, yesterday, on my 55th birthday, I made 55 self portraits. Some were on my own when I was at my office, some were with friends that came over in the evening for root beer floats. I don’t know how long I’ll do this tradition, but at this point I can’t see a reason to end it.
(Here’s where you can see what I did in 2022).
Some of the images are repeat ideas from previous years. I kind of like shooting how my day starts and ends, so that motif gets repeated from year to year. And some of the images get repeated because, I’ll be honest, it’s hard to think of 55 brand new self portrait ideas that I’ve never done before. So here you go. Fifty five self portraits on the occasion of my 55th birthday.
Click on any image to view it larger.
