It’s all about me

Being an openly self-obsessed female in today’s generation, I recently booked myself into a boudoir photography photoshoot with www.fyeoportraits.com. I came away with a rosy glow but at a loss as to what I could possibly do with the naked/semi naked photos of myself? “I have to do something with them” I told myself, “I have paid enough”…

A few weeks on and Steve Clark from our web department showed me some photos he had done by www.creativeglamour.co.uk with his pregnant wife. It involved body painting followed by an artistic photshoot. Truly amazing work from an artist called Vanessa Wayne. Portraits/photos have always been a ‘want’ with people, Venture Portraits is one company I feel intentionally kicked off this trend to display yourself in an alternative fashion.

Recently I have looked around at how powerful our egos have become to making money in todays society. And I am not just talking about physically getting your face/bod onto a canvas. Facebook has become an enormous egotistical means of talking about yourself and showing people what you are all about. The way they have adapted it to become familiar to twitter, the home page now displays status upon status, with ‘comments’ and ‘likes’ from ‘friends’ (and I think we all know to use the term friends loosely). Recently I noticed they have changed it so a box appears in the right-hand column telling me “You have not connected with Karen Astill in a while, write on her wall”. I found this pushing the boundaries of invitation within Facebook to adopting a more ‘we want you to’ approach. But do you know what? I did it! I wrote “Facebook has just told me I have not connected with you in a while and that I should write on your wall, but little does Facebook know we talk to each other every other day and are going on holiday with each other”. I found it extremely comical, but not at all surprising that Facebook are constantly inventing new ways in which to keep the site fresh and maintain engagement with their people more. They obviously need to make more money and keep the site alive. All they are doing is using ‘our’ egos to do it.

Going back to my comment earlier “I have to do something with them I told myself, I have paid enough” I decided to use iphoto to create a calendar. What a perfect way to get prints done at a reasonable cost of £18, AND I get something more than just prints… I get a calendar. I then thought about looking around at what else was on the market that works in a similar way. www.photobox.co.uk is another site that uses the same idea. It’s books, cards, calendars, mug, key rings, mouse mats etc. Here is where my creative skills kicked in. I was unhappy with the design template Photobox provided in comparison to iphoto, no full bleed options for images, limited on font size and text. Maybe slightly cheaper that iphoto but hey I guess that’s why.

My overview on all this I suppose is how the digital world has changed ‘with’ us, in order to create new businesses and ideas, and use our egos and self importance to do it. Maybe celebrities and the media are a huge influence on this, in fact I would be so bold as to say I believe they are. As a designer I notice the imperfections with the retouching used with such ideas as wwww.fyeoportraits.com. A few scuffs on my shoe, dare I say it but a little bit of light enhancement on some unsightly hair on my thigh, but would this be noticed by someone who is not a designer? More importantly, is this acceptable? I can go into Photoshop and take it out but can Joe Bloggs? Maybe it’s important not to forget the expertise that professionals hold in todays digital world.

We have certainly come a long way from this…

to this…

I for one am not complaining of this change. I look forward to seeing more companies out there such as www.fyeoportraits.com and www.creativeglamour.co.uk, and maybe when there are more they will become more affordable. I can’t afford botox or a boob job so a bit of dark lighting, quick retouching and a upload to face book will suit me fine for now :).