Self-Portrait Friday...

Lately, the self-portraits have become somewhat of an illustrated dream journal. I've been trying to embody the surreal symbolically in these photographs. Not an easy feat. Especially trying to translate last night's dream. It was a semi-lucid dream, where I was partially conscious that it was in fact a dream. It felt so real though and started off so ordinary. I woke up and got out bed. I headed to the shower like any other day. As I washed myself and drifted off into the euphoria of a hot shower, the droplets and spray of water became diamonds. The soap suds became crystalline bubbles. One would think that it would hurt being pelted with precious gemstones, but it felt like a slow and steady shower of rice or running your fingers through dry lentils. It felt absolutely luxurious, like thousands of tiny massages. I was also excited and thrilled to be ankle deep in diamonds, surely worth many, many, many millions...

Setting up this shot and taking it on my own was not the easiest. I did have some antique chandelier crystals that I thought would be a suitable substitutions for diamonds, which helped. I thought about going in the shower and taking the picture there, but the lighting in the shower is not the best, I didn't want to get my camera wet, and I didn't want the lens to fog up (nor did I want to take a cold shower). So I settled on greasing myself down with oil and spritzing myself with a water-bottle. Problem solved, right? Unfortunately the carefully placed strands of leaded glass crystal started slipping and sliding. I also don't have a tripod, so I had to jerry rig a stack of boxes to get the camera at the right height. Considering all the challenges, I think the shot turned out quite well and captured the essence of the dream perfectly.