How many photos and videos do you have of you dressed?

[Alice Torn]

I have around 15,000 , since 2005. Narcissist? I am afraid so, as an old single.

[Melody A]

I have about 250 all taken within the last year but only a handful are of a decent quality. I've kept the majority of them as a reference to see what works, what doesn't work and where I can improve. It's fun to look at the earlier ones to see how much my style has changed.

[Robin414]

Hmmm, I have a couple as a guy, and like 50 as....well...less discusting ? OMG, I am T...something! I've even posted a few in the out takes thread 😝

[SharonDenise]

I've only been taking selfies of myself for about the past three years. By the way, buy a tripod for selfies as it makes it easier to take pictures. I have many at home pictures and pictures taken of me at various events planned by my support group or another transgender organization. The only one available here is my avatar. I should post others, but being older, I'm never sure how to do these things.

[Samantha981]

I have several hundred but only ~200 are any good. I need to clean up my files! I tend to take several like 20 at a time rapid fire with the intent to find one that is nice, just never get back to deleting. I also take close ups of makeup after a makeover in the hopes of being able to repeat the work later myself. I may do 20 or 30 shots of my eyes or contouring to get different angles , eyes open/closed. Fun to look at later and re-live!! All selfies taken by myself. Hard part is finding a place with good lighting.

[sometimes_miss]

Zero. Zip. Zilch. Zippo. Diddly. Nada. None.

[SHY KIM]

Hi Alice
I destroyed the video years ago as a safe guard (it had a lean towards a XXX flick featuring me and my SO) I STILL REMEBER IT THOUGH
As for pics I have a small album from Kims early years (maybe 50 pics) - of which also was almost destroyed - but sound judgment prevailed
I plan to add to it in my middle years once I get things together and present better (a work in progress)
Kim

[Nadine Robles]

A couple hundred pics from which I could narrow down to a couple dozen (im picky with photos), but most of them are NSFW. No videos

[Kate Simmons]

Not that many Alice. Maybe 6,000 or so.

[audreyinalbany]

only about ten or twelve. I find that actually seeing pictures of me dressed pretty much spoils the illusion. Every time I get to thinking I can blend as a woman all I have to do it look at a couple pictures and it brings me right back to reality

[Sarah Beth]

I don't have many I take them and don't like how I look and delete them

[Georgia_Maine]

Let's see. 6 GB of Gigi photos divided by 2 MB per photo. Thats ... OMG! I am a narcissist! I really must clean out my files!

[Alice Torn]

Obviously, I do not have a SO or wife, or I may not have any at all! I find my style has not changes too much, but I went from old 35 MM and 110 cameras, where i spent a fortune on developing, to digitals. I like to look at my old ones at times, and see i have not aged too much Vanity, vanity, all is vanity! Paaaaart of me is a narcissist. Part of me is unselfish, giver.

[Adriana Moretti]

I dont take many photos, although I wish I did take more , I always forget, and I hate stopping to say "Hey can you take a pic for me" then I regret it the next day ...but everey day I say to myself I need to take more pictures and everyday I still never do. In 2015 I took every picture I could find and turned it into 1 quick video like the ending credits of a National Lampoons Movie ...so i guess i have 1 video....thats something else id like to take more of...videos....if i were rich id hire my own personal paparazzi

[tifftg]

I have a couple thousand but only less than 100 that I like. Been taking for years, once digital came along it was possible to keep private and inexpensively. I keep them on Flickr but am concerned on whether that great tool may disappear with Yahoo being under pressure

[Tara Rushing]

I have around 30 pics and 0 videos. I take pics with my phone and the terrible ones get deleted and the so-so ones get emailed to my work computer where I hide them in a folder. Wish my ratio of so-so's to terribles would get better.....

[NicoleScott]

For those of us that started out with film photography, with it's cost and privacy concerns, going digital was HUGE. I take a lot to get a few good ones, and keep the good ones in different folders for easier viewing later. I have no qualms about using editing tools - that's what they're for.

[BillieAnneJean]

How the photo thing got going for me.
I did a four day photo shoot at TG Miss in Racine, Wisconsin. It was BLISS. I had only been CDing for just a few months at the time. Having that transformation/photo shoot really got me going at a level that would have taken me many years. Their camera takes a photo every six seconds and you are facing a mirror. So you can alter the pose just slightly to get a better and better photo of the same basic pose. Then there are four or more outfits each day and maybe two makeup looks per day. So I ended up with six THOUSAND photos from those sessions. And of that maybe six hundred are good. And a hundred are beyond my imagination fantastic. Every CDer needs to do this.

And I take fifty to even a hundred photos every time I go OUT. Sometimes they turn out just OK. But with what I learned at TG Miss most of the time, each time I go OUT, I get maybe five great photos of which a couple are fantastic. That's the advantage of digital. Take many shots, some of em are going to be better than others, but maybe, just maybe, you will get one or a few GREAT ones. How to determine which ones ate great? If they make YOU smile, then they are great.

So all in all, over just a bit more than three years CDing I have about........drum roll.............................................. ..................................

Fourteen THOUSAND photos!

Only because of digital.

But remember, when they asked Babe Ruth how he got so many hits, he said it was because he swung so many times.

So of those 14,000 I have around 500 really really fabulous photos.

So wherever you are whatever you are doing, take a lot of photos. And if you choose to perfect your look, use those photos as documentation to f what does and doesn't work for you.

It is.....

SUCH FUN

And for your viewing pleasure may I please submit an example of what practice and luck (mostly) got me?

I do NOT look this good in reality. No really! But once in a while everything clicks and the flash and the smog and the magic result in something that makes me SO HAPPY!

[Saikotsu]

None. Well, that's not entirely true. When I came out to my sister, she asked to see me en femme. So I sent her a pic. It's been deleted locally, but once something is out there on the internet, its out there.

[Jenniferathome]

My question is, why keep so many photos? I understand the taking of photos, I do it myself. I use the most recent photos as a guide for what to work on. But once worked on, it has no more value, so out it goes and the next new one becomes the target to improve upon. How can you even review hundreds, let alone thousands?

Now, I have kept few photos from the very first time I dressed after coming out to my wife about 5 years ago, maybe 4 or 5 total pictures, to remind me of where I started. It's a comedy really. Anything in-between is immaterial any longer.

[BillieAnneJean]

How can anyone review so many pictures?

There is a place nearby that processes string beans. They inspect each and every one by a video camera and a computer. But that conveyor runs maybe a billion beans each season at a rate of thousands a second. How does that computer do it? Easy, one at a time as they go by the scanner. VERY efficient.

That is how I reviewed thousands of pictures. Each day when I get back home I download them from the camera card in to a subdirectory with the date and the event name (ie: 2016 02 04 OUTing or 2016 02 04 IN Meeting). Those subdirectories are in subdirectories labelled OUTings and IN Meetings like our Group runs. Each day when I get home I do the preliminaries and then I go through the photos and delete the bad ones. Then I select the best ones and copy them to a directory that is labelled Favorites. Any time I want to look at some great (to me) photos I just go to the Favorites. Efficient.

So even what seems like a big job can be a small job if done a bit at a time.

Like this weekend. I will be OUT all day tomorrow. I will have maybe a hundred photos to review. It will take me maybe fifteen minutes to do that and put the good ones in my Favorites. Whenever I need a pick me up I just go there an run the slideshow.

As for why to keep so many? Each picture represents a bit of my journey. Each time I get dressed I change one tiny bit of my presentation. Just one and tiny. The photos show what works and what doesn't. I use them as a cook book for how I got here and what doesn't work. And as for the number, each picture is digital. So there is no difference in cost from one to fourteen thousand. And the space on my shelf is the same, because they are all in my hard drive and a backup or two in USB external drives. So they take up almost no room.

With digital there is no significant number any more. One or twenty thousand or fifty thousand. It is just a hard drive.

Pictures of one's self is like a report card of our presentation for those who like that. Not for everyone. Not better. Not worse. No hierarchy. We all have different paths. For those of us who choose, photos are a validation of our personal technique. It is all....

SUCH FUN!

PTTC

[Donna St. Marten]

Geez, I have over 500 posted on Flickr, and that's only a fraction.

[Abbey11]

Not enough

[Beverley Sims]

I have less than .01 percent of my total photo collection.

This equates to about a hundred picked out shots.

I like to keep track of them and use them for reference in my progress over the years.

Videos, likewise.

Good for deportment and presentation training.

[Diversity]

None. I don't want to chance my family seeing me dressed en-femme.
Seeing me in the mirror is good enough for me at present.
Di