Here’s an excerpt from my Developmental scrapbook that I submitted for my Psychology 101 class in College.

Horoscopes, predestination and other metaphysical abstractions have never been worth my attention but when I read a postcard (I collect postcards, by the way) the description for a typical Gemini struck a chord in me. I still find it hard to believe that the stars could actually foresee that I would end up in Mass Communication.

My first dream was to be a geneticist so I tried to get in the Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (MBB) program [in UP Diliman. I figured that if I couldn't get in, then it was a sign that I shouldn't be in the sciences.]

My next choice was Communication Research — which was what I got.

Now I thank my lucky stars for being born a Gemini, the sign of the inventor and innate communicators.

The Mirror Project is a collection of self-portraits submitted by people worldwide using a camera and any reflective surface — whether it’s a mirror, glass windows or sunglasses.

I came across The Mirror Project when I was browsing through a blog of a former orgmate of mine in the UP Communication Research Society named Rain.

I had tried my hand at taking self-portraits with my trusty Kodak DC3200 a few years ago and I felt confident enough to share my output with the world. After selecting from my gallery of self-portraits, I chose one of my most recent ones taken just a few weeks ago.

The Mirror Project is quite strict regarding its submissions so I was anxious to know if they would approve my self-portrait. I was pleasantly surprised to find their email to me just one or two days after I submitted my self-portrait to them.

Submissions to The Mirror Project:

Click here to view my first submission entitled "Who is that girl I see?"

Click here to view my second submission entitled "Glass etchings on my mind."

Here’s my third submission entitled "Reflecting in an Artist’s Home."

Why don’t you submit a portrait of your own? Here are some tips to help get you started:

A. If this is your first submission, we would encourage you to spend some time looking through the photographs. The Mirror Project is about self-portraiture. You should be the one holding the camera, taking the picture. Tripods are OK. You, or some part of you, and the camera should be visible within the reflection.

B. JPG format photographs. No BMPs. No GIFs.

C. The JPG must be less than 30k. Or to put it another way, you will not be able to upload an image larger than 30k.

D. The photograph should be no greater than 300 pixels on the longest dimension. An example would be 300 width x 240 height for a landscape oriented photograph, or 240 width x 300 height for a portrait oriented photograph. So, your 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 photograph is too big. Any image larger than 300 pixels will be resized during upload. Images should be at least 90 x 120 or 120 x 90 pixels.

E. Please don’t add any text or graphics around or overtop your image. This includes single pixel keylines, frames or borders around the image and dates, copyright info or urls on top. Please don’t include multiple images within one image. The exception to this would be photographs taken with a Lomo Action Sampler.

F. Photographs shouldn’t be overly manipulated with filters and effects after the fact. What does that mean? A little dodging and burning to reveal an image is ok. Moving pixels around or adding or removing elements isn’t. You want to crop? Crop ’til you drop, baby!

G. Information to include: your name (first or first and last - no nicknames or noms de plumes - really!), URL if applicable, date (month & year), location (where you took the picture - city, country, etc.), title and description. Tell us a story: Why you were there, who you were with, or how you were feeling. A name and valid email address are the only required fields.

H. How many photographs can you submit? Three per week (7 days). We hate to have to limit your participation, but we want this to be a community project that isn’t dominated by a ga-zillion photographs of one or two people.