Photographer Throws Stuff at Her Head for Hilarious Photos

Photography Tips

Latvian photographer Kaija Straumanis made the viral rounds recently for her brilliant photo series, “Stuff Being Thrown At My Head”. Gosh, even the title is funny. If you haven’t seen the images yet, you can check them out here:

But there are more than a few deceptions floating around. First, though Kaija is Latvian-born, she’s actually living in New York–debunking the myth that this is what Latvians do for fun on weekends.

Second, she’s not actually being struck in the head. Instead, she set up her Nikon D60 on a tripod with a self-timer, took several different self-portraits holding the objects against her own face, then created composites in Photoshop and edited out her hands.

Lastly, the series wasn’t originally called “Stuff Being Thrown At My Head”; it was, simply, “Headshots”, which is a deftly clever little pun in its own right.

Can you spot where her hand was?

The attention was still a nice surprise for the amateur photographer, who saw her Flickr page skyrocket from two-digit page views to over 650,000 virtually overnight.

“Sorry guys! The truth is out: I’d never sacrifice my face for art. That’s the big reveal: Nothing has ever been thrown at my face in the pictures. I feel like it’s disappointing that I’m not actually getting beaten up. I’m duping the internet!” – Kaija Straumanis