self-portraits with yellow flowers
SELF-PORTRAITS: my reasons for creating them
I have spent the last decade of my life showing women how beautiful and powerful they are. Playing in nature with them for an hour or two, them wearing different outfits or none at all, to then have them look at the final photos and gasp, “Is this really me?”
Their eyes lit up, they stood taller, I could tell that they were completely in love with themselves in those photos. Giving them this experience felt like the purpose of WHY I was put onto this Earth.
But I was jealous. I wanted this experience for myself. The whole premise of my work is LOVE YOURSELF, you are amazing, you can do and be whatever you want to be, just see yourself for the magnificent GODDESS that you are.
Some say that our art is the medicine that WE ourselves most need in our lives. And I always knew it. I knew and still know that I must cultivate the SELF-LOVE that the pages of my website are screaming about. The time has come. It was time for me to try some of my own medicine. “I will create artistic self-portraits so I too can fall in love with the woman behind the camera,” I decided.
The interesting thing was that I have toyed with the idea of self-portraits before. When my first daughter was about two months old, out of creative hunger, in a breastfeeding bra stained with milk I created self-portraits of me with a rose. That was my most successful self-portrait in the sense that I consider it absolutely gorgeous and other people like it too. There were some other self-portraits that I’ve made that I didn’t love so I ended up not even sharing them publicly.
SELF-PORTRAITS WHILE LIVING AT THE NATURIST RESORT
In the summer of 2025 I had an opportunity to do an artist-in-residence program at a naturist resort called Sunsport Gardens. The path of an artistic nude photographer led me to meet Katie Ospina who lived there, we became friends, and I would visit her at the resort from time to time. This nudist resort is a piece of paradise in Loxahatchee, FL and they support artists. The thought of “it would be nice to live there for free and create” visited me once and then turned into months-long conversations with the owners about it, until it finally came to fruition in June-July 2025. It also coincided perfectly (thank you Universe) with a rough patch I was experiencing in my marriage, so it was an absolute gift.
Here I am, in a tropical paradise, living in a RV that is the cutest thing and a very romantic experience. I have kids with me some days, but other days I am completely free. I roll out of bed naked, go outside naked, and get a variety of nature backdrops to play in.
I must say that doing self-portraits is a rather painful experience technically speaking. I would set up my camera on a tripod, use a Camcode app as a remote control for the camera which allowed me to see what the camera saw. I would set my camera on a delayed timer, which meant that from the moment I clicked the button on my phone, I had five seconds to drop it and get into a pose. I could then check right there on my phone what the photo looked like, and then repeat the process more times until the masterpiece shined back at me from the screen.
Very often, the masterpiece or even a resemblance thereof, refused to show up. Oftentimes I had to get up, adjust the camera angle, climb back into the bushes or wherever the inspiration called me to be, and start over again. During sessions when I liked how the photos were turning out, the complexity of the process did not bother me. When I didn’t like how I looked, or I couldn’t get into flow, I would quickly get pulled into “why in the world am I doing this?”
My very first series of self-portraits while I was living at Sunsport Gardens was photos with the yellow flowers. I was actually filming an ending for my hemi-facial spasm video (it is about my journey with healing a debilitating condition that I was able to heal with a brain surgery), and I wanted to have some pretty flowers for the table to make the shot a little more festive.
There I was, wearing a fuchsia dress, all made up and ready to film, when I discover that I need some flowers for the table. I go outside, feeling extremely overdressed. I run into Amanda. She is obviously naked, except for a tie dye skirt around her hips and a hat to protect her from the sun. I tell her about my dilemma and she suggests I go pick these flowers called Mexican sunflowers.
She gives me a pair of scissors. I go get the flowers, put them in a small glass and film my video. And then as I look at these flowers on the table in my camper, I realize that they are so gorgeous that I want to be photographed WITH them. I decide to go for an implied nude theme, knowing that the flowers will hide everything that needs to be hidden. I create photos that make me so happy.
I noticed that dissatisfaction with the body fades with time. I have a photo of myself from when before I had kids, and look absolutely stunning there. Back then, of course, I thought I was fat. So maybe when I’m eighty or ninety, I will look at THESE photos and appreciate and ADMIRE my body. And for this very important reason, I invite every one to do self-portraits.
Self-portraits Resources and Inspiration
If you are looking for some inspiration in the self-portrait space, there are some pretty amazing creators out there.
A few that I follow are:
Daria Gudkova: https://www.instagram.com/dariagudkova
Teri Hofford https://www.instagram.com/terihofford/
Helen Hetkel: https://www.instagram.com/helen.hetkel/
Miki: https://www.instagram.com/mikis.atelier
Came across this profile: https://www.instagram.com/artofselfportraiture/
self-portraits: the healing power
I have struggled with self-esteem and self-worth since adolescence.
I grew up being friends with this girl who was tall, with a tiny waist, big boobs, huge blue eyes, long eye lashes and symmetrical features that made everyone do a double take.
When she and I would walk the main street of Saint Petersburg (Russia, obviously), people’s eyes were magnetized to her face. You can’t NOT see her. I did not have that. I felt overlooked, not pretty enough, and tied my self-worth to my appearance. Kids teased me that I looked Chinese, or that I was hit on the face with a frying pan. I would boil parsley and then put wipe my face with the mixture in order to get rid of my freckles. At least THAT, would make normal looking, I thought. Alas, there was nothing that could be done to change what I looked like. I was not as pretty as my friend, I did not feel worthy, and somewhere along the way learned to seek validation from the outside…
Looking beautiful, feeling beautiful, being perceived as beautiful, as a result, became of major importance for me. There are some people for whom it is not important. When I dig deeper, I understand that the need to look beautiful must be stemming from an evolutionary need for acceptance. And I know I have come a long way, and now feel more at home in my body than I ever have. But the need for beauty is still there. Maybe it is my gift to see the beauty in others, and show it to them, because a lot of other women feel the same way as I did and am slowly unlearning it. I am worthy regardless of what I look like. And I AM beautiful. I can see it. I get validation of it from others (maybe the least trusted source), but most importantly, I FEEL IT. I am starting to feel my own magnificence and becoming more magnetic as a result of it. The more I tap into that energy of knowing that I am beautiful, perfect in a way, perfect with all my imperfections, perfect in my humanity (but in no way above others, just in my own uniqueness), that I am creative, that l am powerful - the more I feel it, the more I tap into it, the more magnetic I become.
In the beginning of my creative play, I WAS wearing a turquoise tube top. I LOVE the combination of these two complimentary colors, but I decided to go for the implied nude theme after all.
When I look at this photo, the asymmetry in my face is apparent, but there is also so much beauty in it. I held my hands in this way to make my skin taut and as if to say, am I perfect?
Did self-portraits help with that? Maybe. Maybe not. Photography definitely holds this healing power and I am glad that I was able to experience myself a fraction of what I give others. I think the magic of photography in general and self-portraiture in particular is that everyone sees life around them, they see themselves in the mirror, but when people see a photograph, they say, WOW, you captured THAT. That frozen slice of reality, that split second, that glance, that move, that emotion - you froze it in time. And maybe the colors came together in a beautiful harmony, and the composition…
Engaging my creativity makes me feel whole, valid and complete. I think creativity is one of the reasons I was able to stay sober for almost 13 years. And I am sure there have been studies done on how engaging creativity can boost your confidence, something that I touched on in this article.
When I create my own self-portraits, I have a chance to BE SEEN and see myself. Even if the gift of being seen happens by the artist me. Also, the fact that I can express myself through this creative outlet BECAUSE I CAN, feels liberating. I can be whoever I want in the photograph. And I get to be beautiful, if I get the masterpiece to shine back at me from the screen. And it is often not the superficial type of “pretty” that I am after, but perhaps the entire process and the final result are a sort of reclamation of my self-worth.
The connection to the creative source allows me to dissolve in the process and what I do becomes deeply meaningful. The logical mind is very good at dismissing some ideas, but when I am taking self-portraits, the logical mind is not allowed in. He stays behind closed doors, while the creative mind gets to play and run the show. The way you plug a mixer into an electric outlet, I plug myself into the process, put my head down and plunge into work. If I do that, if I surrender to it, the creative process consumes me, swallows me in and I become a part of it. I think it is GOD. Or GODDESS. You connect to her, you connect to the GODDESS, and you BECOME HER.
And when you come out of it, hours later, look around the room and see tripod and camera equipment over here, your clothes and things over there, everything scattered in chaos all over the room, and you feel high. You have a deep satisfaction for what you’ve done. After a session like this I say, I don’t even care if the images are any good, because I got so much joy out of the process. And I am lying to myself of course, because I know that the reason I am so glad with the process is because I know, and I SEE and I feel that the photos are going to be great, that I am capturing it, and that this beautiful divinely orchestrated creative process in which I tap into that GOD part of me, is working out for me.
Here are most of the portraits from that series, with the exception of a few images where my nipple is partially visible but I decided to not to remove it. The other option would have been to slap a “censored” label on them, but I decided against it. I might come to a point where I’m ok with MY nipples on my website, but for now, I’m respecting my own boundary :)
Here is what the process actually looked like. Follow me on Instagram for more behind-the-scenes magic.
What did you think of my portraits? Which one do you think is the one I consider THE masterpiece from this session? Do YOU take self-portraits? I would love to hear - please share in the comments or send me a private message! ♥