Hi!
This year I've found a new way to express myself that suits me perfectly. Self Portraits.
I installed a self timer app on my iPhone a little over a year ago and was immediately hooked.
I've been thinking a lot about self portraits and what it is that makes it so intriguing to me.
I think it's many things. I don't take a lot of selfies in the meaning of holding the phone infront of me and taking a photo. I like selfies a lot, but for some reason I prefer to see myself in the surroundings I'm in, not just a photo of my face that day. It's like I want to remember the place I was at and the mood I was in at the moment I take my picture as much as I want to remember how I looked that day.
Another, more important thing, is my love for theatre. I've been acting since I was very young and always really loved the way the stage contains a story. That is one of the things I love with photography as well; to set a scene and create a fantasy situation in the world I live in.
Self portraits is such a great medium for that because taking a pretty photo of a beautiful landscape is one thing but often I think there's a person missing, someone who can take that amazing scenery and bring it back to a situation that tells a story.
A really tall mountain can be pretty to look at but it rarely tells a story. But if you put a person next to the mountain you not only get a better idea of how large the mountain really is, you also see the photo more from the eyes of the person in the picture. What must it have felt to be there, at that wonderous place?!

I take self portraits on lots of different occasions and for many reasons.
I think it has made me a better photographer too, actually. It forces me to create a scene in my mind and really think of what the feeling in the photo should be.

In this post I will show you some tips on how to take better self portraits and what tricks I use to create moods.
And remember, all of these are taken with my iphone (both my old 4s and my new iPhone6) so no fancy camera equipment needed!
Here are my favourites from 2014.

DOCUMENTING AN EMOTION:

One of the reasons I love self portraits is to document a feeling I had that day. Sort of putting my emotion in a scene.
It takes a bit of acting but mostly just being myself a little bit more than usual to really get the feelings through the lens.
This photo is from when I had the stupid cold in Los Angeles in november. I was bored out of my mind and needed to do something! I was in LA for fucks sake! In a fancy hotel room for that matter!
It felt almost surreal to be forced to stay inside all day in this strange luxurious place that David and I could never afford for ourselves (David's producer booked the room for us) while the sun was shining outside. We had let roomservice know that they wouldn't need to clean our room that day because I was just a pile of fever and snot and weird dreams so the feeling of being all alone in a strange place was even stronger.

I work at a group home with 24 hour shifts. There needs to be someone there during the nights for safety but the person working the nights get to sleep at work. It's a weird feeling to stand in my nightgown, brushing my teeth in the bathroom at a completely quiet and dark workplace.

Summer at my parent's house. David is talking on the phone with people in Hollywood. Astor the cat watches sceptically as I'm dancing barefoot.
Sometimes life is wonderful and weird and quite silly.
(This also reminds me of the hundreds of photos I needed to take before I actually timed the jump perfectly, hah!)

Bored on my vacation. That should be illegal, right?!

A few weeks ago I went to the doctor to take blood tests. I have a stupid thyroid that needs to be checked a lot. Blood tests aren't really my thing though, so I fainted. But I got a lollipop from the nurse, so that was nice.
Here I'm waiting for David to come pick me up, all white in my face and wobbly legged.

And sometimes it's all about getting the feeling of sunshine into the picture to remember on cold winter days.

Like in LA when the cold kept ahold of me and the setting sun felt like the best medicin there ever could be.

FINDING PERFECT LIGHT AND NEVER LETTING GO:

Sometimes it's just a matter of finding a spot with perfect lighting and revel in it.
I can't really explain it, but colours and light can make my heart sing. It feels like music to me when I watch a photo (or anything really) with beautiful tones, light and colour.
This spot in a staircase with a dusty window is just perfect and gets me every time.

I MEAN LOOK! TRIPLE SELFIE!

This was all about showing off my new pink bike shorts that kept my thighs from hating on eachother during the warm summer months.

Oh.
Yeah.
This one and the one below. Music to my colour and light loving eyes.

The sombre tones adds to the atmosphere and I think you can tell I was having days when I wasn't feeling my very best. Those days are to be remembered too, you know.

One of the things I've realised since starting to take all these self portraits is that often times I don't even think of the person in the photo as me. It's just a person, or an emotion.
That is so freeing, you have no idea!
For me it has really been a great way to stop thinking about my body in negative ways. It might sound weird, but think about it, when you see a stranger you don't give them and their bodies the same scrutiny as you do yourself, right? They are just people. People with different bodies, emotions and looks, but you can't see on the outside what they think of themselves on the inside, and when you see a stranger for the first time you only get an idea of them.
This is something I've been thinking about when I look at the photos I've just been taking. I don't see myself as me with all the things that I am. I start seeing a "perfect stranger" that is just what this photo needed. It's so hard to explain but I hope you get the idea. -Let go of the things your mind keep hanging onto and see yourself as a unique person that is meant to look just like you do.

OUTFIT PHOTOS:

That "new to you" vintage find just needs to be documented! Even though the buttons bulge a little- but maybe that was intended?

In LA in my best dress feeling so very ready for a sunny day when Sweden was having rain rain rain for months.

SETTING A SCENE:

This might be my favourite thing to do!
It's all about using the scenery around me and get it to inspire me to create a little story.
Like a game of hide and seek in a Greek temple in the middle of a forest in Sweden.

Or a fantasy land where pink rhododendron flower petals covers all the land.

Or taking the messy kitchen combining it with a lens that should have been wiped, a person in a sailor cardigan and the skirt on sideways with a bleak look on her face and calling it ART.
Ha! I love this photo. I call it "Bored Sailor girl in mint green kitchen with unpaid bills and a loaf of bread."
It's a masterpiece, right?

Finding a fairytale forest and wanting to stay in this dream world forever.

(The iPhone is standing on a tree stump leaning on a pine cone, by the way.)

Nothing is as scary as the Lights Out Hallway.
Over the knee socks and a doll like face sets the scene.

Walking around like a ghost on a dark morning.

Having a cape makes it necessary to take spooky photos on the cemetery during dusk (and scare people out walking).

Is there still time?
Airport bathroom. Nothing more to say.

Knock Knock!
A little series of photos creating a story about an abandoned trailer in the middle of nowhere California.

Anybody home?

Who's there?!

HELLOOOO! Let me in!

I'll just let myself in then...

I edit all of my photos with the app Snapseed. It's brilliant!
You can change the exposure, contrast, saturation and all that but you can also edit small areas of the photo; like if there's a spot that is a bit too dark you can lighten it up a little.
The app has a bunch of really nice filter styles too and you can change how much of the style you use and also edit brightness and saturation in every filter. You can put a tilt shift effect to your photos, create a center focus and much more.
Snapseed costs a little but it is so very worth it. It's like a mini Lightroom for your smartphone! (No, I'm not sponsored by snapseed. I'm just a big fan.)

DOUBLING IT UP:

Then we have the extra curricular. The app PhotoMirror is a really fun way to turn your photos into weird and wonderful art pieces.

This spooky hotel corridor with a Lotta inside it is even spookier when there's two Lottas in it.

Bored Squared.

Happy and excited Squared.

Bonus Pic. David and Lotta as King and Queen from a deck of cards.

The self timer app I'm using is called TimerCam and I usually set it to 10 or 15 seconds so I don't have to run to get in place. As for making the iPhone stand I use what I have around me as tripod. Books, a fruit, a folded up sock; anything really! I never ever use the flash because it just makes skin tone and everything look horrible.

And yes, it feels a bit awkward in the beginning but don't worry, you'll get used to it soon enough. And before you know it you'll start seeing scenes everywhere around you!

I hope you found this inspiring.
If you do start (or already are) taking self portraits I would love to see some!
Add or tag me on instagram or twitter (I'm @lottalosten everywhere) and show me your scenes!

Tjingeling!
/Lotta

I woke up from my dream just when I was about to win the cabbage soup contest.
A man on the street, four stories down, was screaming at the top of his lungs "EEEEEVAAAA! Could you throw down my keys from the baaaalcoooonyyyy?!?"
Everybody in the neighbourhood must have heard (and startled awake from their sleep since it was far too early to be screaming to ladies from underneath balconies) and now we all know that this man forgot his keys on his way to work.

The air today is something special. So full of autumn, yet warm with the long lasting remnants of summer. To be able to enjoy our indian lunch outside on the second day of october is beyond amazing.
I have found a new café close to where we live. It is where I sit right now, all alone except for the owner. Having been open for business for only 6 weeks it's too early to know if the place is empty because it's so new nobody knows of it yet or if it's bound to die before it even got to live fully.

I'm trying to get into writing again. I used to write everyday.
I kind of broke that habit when I started blogging in English. I do not regret that decision; it needed to happen, but the joy of bending a language after my own rules seems almost impossible to find in English.
Before, if I made up my own words in Swedish, everybody would see that as a sign of me knowing my way around the words. But now, if I would do the same in English, I feel like people won't know the difference between me not knowing the languange and being a really brilliant word wizard.
And that makes it hard to be free when creating sentences.
And I want to be free.
And I want to write.
So I've made a decision. I'm going to write as if I am completely free and own my words in English the same way I do in Swedish.
It's all a matter of the mind, right?

My plan to get this wordly freedom started?
I'm going to sit at this 6 weeks old café (with two more customers now) and I'll drink my latte's and I'll write in a book, with a pen and look like I'm doing important stuff.
(Except for right now when I'm going to take a photo of said book and pen and reveal to all the people (two customers and one owner) that I'm maybe not that brilliant.)
When you're used to be able to twist and bend the language exactly to your liking it's kind of weird to realize you don't have enough words anymore.
I know I'm getting better. I know I'm not bad.
But I'm not as good as I am in Swedish and it doesn't really matter how much I want to be able to get my thoughts through the pen and onto the paper, it's not going to happen as fluidly as I would like it to.
So for me to decide "I know it won't be as great, but I'm still going to do this" takes some true willpower. And courage.
Because if it's one thing I hate it is to do things I'm not good at .
The year of creative bravery. That was the whole idea with 2014.
So let's be brave!

Hi!
Oh my! It's been so great to see how people have liked and shared my latest blogpost (Being a woman in a shortfilm gone viral) because I really have been thinking a lot about the topic for quite some time now and that my words actually meant something to more people than myself makes me insanely happy.

One of the most common responses I've gotten regarding my blog post is something like this "you shouldn't listen to those trolls" and while I agree (and probably would have said the same thing just five months ago) I feel like it's a much bigger issue than just ignoring stupid trolls. Because when you read hurtful words about you it's very hard not to feel sad for a while. And if people's only response is "don't listen to that" it only gets worse because what if you actually DO feel kinda sad? Well, then you also feel a bit ashamed of the fact that you can't just shrug it off like all the people around you say you should be able to.
I felt that it was very important to me to write about all this to say that "no, you are not allowed to speak about me this way" and now I feel so much better with myself.

And then, yesterday, I was contacted by a swedish radio station that wanted to talk to me about my text and my experience with all this.
You can listen to the clip here if you want to (it's in swedish though). It was so much fun and I feel like I remembered to say everything I wanted to.

Before I run off to do all the things I need to do before going to work, let me just say this: Thank you so much for all your lovely comments and for sharing my text! It means so much to me, and if it can also mean something to you then I'm just over the moon!


Tjingeling!
Lotta

It's been about four months since Lights Out went viral and lots of things have been happening since then. Both on and off the internet and it's been crazy and wonderful and quite surreal.
We have a lot to thank the internet for; how the film spread all over the world and scared millions of people, how David got contacted by Hollywood and lots of influential people in the movie business, and how our lives will surely never be the same again. For that: Thank you internet!
There is one thing though that took me by surprise in a not so good way, and I thought I would take a few snippets of your time to talk about that.
From the moment Lights Out started spreading across the www people have been commenting the video with words like these:

That girl is uglier than the monster.
That chubby bitch kinda turns me on.
She's fat.
She's weirdly hot.
It's scary cause she's fat.
I would bang her.
This film would have been better with a pretty actress.

And a hundred variations of this.

I'm not writing this text in need of sympathy or reassurance but what I DO want to talk about is the part where it appears to be socially acceptable to speak about women like this the moment they appear on the internet.
I am quite baffled by how people (well, men, really) have felt the need to comment on my body and my physical appearance.

After reading some of the comments on my lack of sexiness the first thing that crossed my mind was this: I am wearing a big old boring pajama shirt! How come they focus on my body when I'm not even wearing something revealing and sexy?
Then I got angry for thinking like that because it shouldn't even matter if I was totally naked, dressed in a garbage bag or wearing red lace underwear; Call me naive, but I didn't think my looks had anything to do with this.

Lights Out is not about me being a chubby, ugly, weirdly hot (or even pretty, for that matter) woman going to bed. It's about a person going to bed. The gender and physical appearance of the person in this shortfilm has no relevance at all.
None whatsoever.
The role could have been played by a tiny girl, a huge woman, a skinny boy, an old man, it doesn't matter.
I'm not supposed to look sexy I'm supposed to be an ordinary person. Nothing more, nothing less. Ordinary. Someone you can identify with when you're going to bed late at night and maybe see something in the shadows you didn't think was there seconds before. When you're all alone and suddenly remember that shortfilm you saw once that was really creepy.

Just another human being. Like yourself.

So if that is what I am, then why would anybody want to point out how NOT model pretty I am?
How I should have been thinner. Blonder. Sexier.
I just don't get it.

Would Lights Out have been the same if it was a glamorous, shiny, perfect human specimen going to bed or would it maybe take some of the scariness out of it? When all the possibility of identification was removed from the premise?
I, for one, think so.
And I need to ask you something. Is it okay to live in a world where men (yes, all of the sexist comments have been written by men) feel that they are entitled to judge women's looks and bodies the second they appear in front of them, in real life or on a screen?
Where the first thing that pops into their mind when they see a woman is about how she looks and not what she seems to be doing. As a character, in a film, with a plot that's hopefully not only about how she's a woman with a body/face/breasts that the audience should comment about.

Maybe it would be an idea to follow what is happening in the story instead?
Maybe that would be something to try the next time?

Not unless the character in a film is turning to the camera saying "and now I want you to judge and critizice the body of the actor behind this role" are you to let your opinion of her physical appearance out on the internet.

There seems to be a widely spread idea that if something you're in goes viral on the internet the negative comments is sort of the price you have to pay for your internet stardom. It's harmless and you should be able to take it.
I've been thinking a lot about that because it makes no sense to me.
Well, yes, I am a 32 year old woman who is fairly satisfied with how I look and I think that I am perfectly alright just the way I am, but it still took me quite some time to learn how to handle these types of comments.

I live a lot of my life on the internet and love it to bits but as someone who has had to go through bullying in the real world as a kid, these hurtful comments feel so very close to what I was exposed to when I was only eleven years old and believed that what the bullies said must surely be the truth.
It's not nice and it's not something you just ignore. It takes time to learn how to leave the bad feelings towards yourself behind you and I know for certain that bullying can hurt for years and years to come.
Mean words hurt just as bad when written down as said out loud. It's not harmless at all.

Young girls and women should not have to toughen up and prepare themselves so that men could be free to judge them openly for their own enjoyment (What kind of enjoyment is that anyway?) and it's time people understand that just because you see a person in a video on youtube that person doesn't have thicker skin than you have.

I have come to the point when I can laugh at the stupid comments regarding my body and looks, and I keep telling myself it's lucky that I am a grown person who have had time to learn to love myself before I happened to be in a video that went viral. It would have been so much harder fifteen, or even ten, years ago.

One thing this whole experience has made me realize though is this:
I will never try to squeeze myself into a mold I won't fit into when that shouldn't matter anyways. I would love to be in many movies and I hope Lights Out is only the beginning for me. If film makers and directors want me in their movies I hope it will be because of how I act, not how I look.

Unless "slightly above average height, freckled, redhead with a european accent" is just what you need for your coming film project, because then I'm all on board!

/Lotta Losten