Self portrait studio
2024 has begun a lot of self reflection and some big moves. I will be turning to full-time studies as an adult student, taking ADHD medication that I believe I will need to succeed. In order to maintain my student loan and save money I will be not be cutting or dying my hair. I will be giving up on my monthly wax treatments, and potentially discontinuing my monthly lash service as well. All in order to cut cost and save what little I have as a living allowance for the year.
Therefore, I do not know the person I will become once I come out of this journey. Between losing my signature look to potentially diluting my outstanding personality. Therefore, I thought it prudent to capture the person that I am now, today, as a memory and a benchmark that I can and reflect on. This self reflection journey has brought me to SelfieLab, a self portrait studio for a private photo shoot.
They offer professional, quality photos that you can take yourself. You basically pay to rent out the studio in blocks of time, and do as you will. You have options for the type of background from white or colours, the position of the photo from full body or portrait, and the colour that the photos will be in from full colour or black-and-white.
I was doing this with a friend, who is also going back to school, so we decided to do a back-to-school photo shoot together. We both love to dress up, so she came with a luggage fill of clothing and accessories so that we could fully commit to the part of school girls via dress. We went all out with pleated skirts, white button up tops, sweater vests, ties, glasses, and Mary Jane shoes.
I even thought of a storyline, where we began the first day of school as well mannered and conservative students and slowly as the year and our photos progress we unwind and unravel into the unruly party girls that we are known to be. Although, when it comes to posting it, I might do so backwards so that we start off as the life of the party and transform into the students we want to be.
This would be our first series of photos, followed by a wardrobe change, into a different school girl look. This would be for a more casual friends shoot with action shots and cliché partner poses.
The studio space is an office up front and a small room with roll out backdrop just behind it. Opposite to this is a wall of mirrors where you can look and position yourself accordingly. A frosted heart on the reflective surface signals the position of the camera, and where to look. There is a soft light to highlight or defuse the further you move away from it. There is also a ring lamp positioned so that you can put your phone on to holster and take some behind the scenes photos or videos. There is also a fan for that “Mariah Carey hair”.
shots”.
The best part about this experience is getting to capture everything just the way you want it, between having a mirror before you, being in control of the clicker, and being able to see the photo taken. The latter most allows you to adjust accordingly, if you don’t like what you see. For example: you don’t like where you are standing with legs too far apart, the expression on your face was off, or you got some shadowing on you face.
You are equipped with a remote to take the photos, a discrete round that fits in the palm of your hand. One button is to take the photos with a click, the second a timer shutter for delayed photos. Simple for the most part although we did have a few challenges, clicking hard enough and capturing the photo when we wanted it when it came to our “jump”.
There were also some minor technical difficulties including the camera not being detected, the light turning off, and the screen not loading the last photo you took. All of which is easy to remedy thanks to the lone employee that mans the experience.
The only thing I can think of is that it would take away from your set studio time and slow your momentum. However, I don’t see that being a problem given how surpised the staff was when we wrapped up within an hour. She said we were done too quick and we still had more time.
When I asked, she revealed that majority of the clients do take the full 90 minutes and end up with over 300 photos. All of which they are allowed to take and get sent to them via email link within 24 hours. I reassured her that we were okay and that we were professional poser, often only needing one take for our poses. We concluded with 63 photos of which five were practice shots and two were intentionally done poorly.
In conclusion, we loved how all the photos turned out and had a laugh taking them. I highly recommend this experience and suggest you do as we did, and bring a luggage at clothing, come in with a storyboard of your concept, and build a story with your photos. This is the perfect way to capture pregnancy photos, graduation photos, birthdays, baby announcements, or even back to school photos for adults.
Selfielab
1037 W Broadway, Vancouver, BC V6H 1E3
+1 (604) 354-0655
selfielab.ca
