The Life and Times...: SelfPortraits and BookShelves

I've always been a fan of the self-portrait. You can really learn what people like and dislike about themselves. I am also a huge fan of books and I think you can learn a lot about someone by looking at their bookshelves...today you will learn a little more about me.

I take pictures of myself a lot...more than one should, but I like to know what I look like. This has been happening ever since my sister bought me a digital camera in 2005. I was so bored that summer after graduation that I took hundreds of photos of myself. I had nothing else to do...3 months of hanging out by the pool can lead one to do crazy things.

It didn't stop after I got a job though...however, there was a long pause. I pause so long that there is one year where there are only two photos of my...total. That would be 2007 when Sydney was born. I digress...let's move on to Jan 2009, I was living alone in Tucson and I was bored. I hadn't even finished unpacking yet...but I never really finished unpacking.

I was only there for a few months...I didn't really have any friends...at one point I worked 3 jobs and went to school full-time. I was busy, but not busy enough to ignore taking my own photo! Now I make sure that my existence is documented.

There were times this past summer where I got really bored...again, no job and a lot of time on my hands.When my family came to visit, I made sure I was in photos...even if I had to take them myself. Like the image to the right of our trip to the Grand Canyon. Aren't those sunglasses great?!

Looking over this past year of self-portraits, what really amazes me is my hair. In the 2005 photo, you can kind of see my hair color, it's this brown/red mixture that other people like...I think it's washed out. Thus I dye my hair black. The years in between, I had very long hair, I cut it in April 2008...and it's this wavy mess. Oh my hair...I'm growing it out again. Anyway, back to this past summer...

It was a rough summer...Mark, unemployed, school. The thing that made me happiest was my bookshelves in my room, so I spent a lot of time in my room...with my books...and sometimes with my camera.

A pause from the self-portraits for a moment...I bought a new bookshelf and then I realized just how often I spend with those books and my bookshelf. I love books. I mean, I am going to library school so that I can spend my day surrounded by books. It only makes sense that my room has a lot of books.

That's not even everything...there's another shelf in the opposite corner. Eventually, my CDs will leave the bookshelf because I'm going to need more room for books...I have more books at my parent's house in Florida!

My point about the bookshelves is that you can tell a lot about someone when you take a look at the books on their shelves. Looking at the titles can tell you about a person's politics, their religion, or if they're a romantic. What genres, what authors, what time period...there's so much to learn from a bookshelf.

It was my obsessive photo-taking this last month that lead me to the bookshelf thoughts because for whatever reason I was in front of my bookshelf...here's February: