Once upon a time, before “selfies” were something that anybody could incessantly do with their phone with little thought given to it, photographers (and artist in general) would do something called self-portraits. For example, great artist like van Gogh, Picasso, Rembrandt, and Dali – to name a few – all painted self-portraits that you would likely recognize if you saw them.

And for photographers, past and present, this might entail just photographing their reflection in glass with careful consideration given to the composition, or setting up their camera on a tripod while getting in the shot themselves, sometimes for multiple exposures on the same frame so there would be two or more of them.

What it never entailed, to my knowledge at least, was them taking off their shirt and doing their best to look like a total douchebag in their bathroom mirror. Or, holding their camera out in front of them while making the dumbest looking duck face they could muster up with their $5 dollar cup of Starbucks coffee. Or – or – maybe doing nothing but photographing themselves – all the time – as if there is nothing else of any interest in the world to photograph.

So, I’m sharing this self-portrait of me taking a selfie, that I did while out shooting architecture for a client yesterday, to encourage more creative self-portraits and less boring selfies. Go out and create self-portraits, not selfies.