Who Am I?

I don't really "do" self portraits. I rarely allow myself to be photographed (and then moan that there are never any nice pictures of me...), preferring to be behind the lens rather than in front of it.

So, when I started getting challenged to do a self-portrait, I thought, well, who am I? Self-portraits, by their nature, say something about you, how you feel at that moment, and how you see yourself. And to some extent (quite a lot I suspect) how you think others see you, and how you want to be seen by others.

So much depth in a simple self-portrait...

So here I am.

Who am I?

I am Jeni. I am Steve's wife, Ben's mummy. I do the washing, the cooking, the cleaning. Sometimes I get to play. Sometimes I even get to sit down with a cup of tea...

This morning I was the gardener, that was a lot of fun! Ben helped greatly with the digging, and we transferred several new plants from their pots into the ground. My plan is to plant around the base of the climbing frame so that in a couple of years' time it will be more like a den underneath, rather than just partitioned by canvas. Just got the lavender to plant now, but that requires taking the slide off, and Ben wants mummy cuddles for a bit.

I am quite pleased with my efforts today. Especially the photograph. It took maybe 15 frames, using a combination of autofocus and manual focus, balancing the camera on a clump of grass, trying to keep Ben and his digging away from it, trying to get it pointing in the right direction, trying not to show my belly (Ben saved the last shot!), trying not to look grumpy, oh my goodness such hard work. And then the sun went in!!!

So here's my stand-by photo :) Ben giving his daddy a bye-bye kiss at the gate this morning. Here's his little story...

This is me giving daddy a bye-bye kiss this morning. Normally during the week mummy and me are still in bed when daddy goes to work, still half asleep! Mummy says he comes and kisses us both goodbye, but I normally only see him when he gets home. This morning we heard the bin lorry outside though, so mummy told me to run to the window to watch, as I was awake anyway. They are noisy lorries!

We watched from the downstairs window while daddy got the car ready, then the recycling lorry came along so we went outside to watch that. Then daddy was ready to go and so I got to give him a bye-bye kiss over the gate.

Bye-bye daddy, see you later!