A trans woman who has been taking daily pictures of herself since transitioning over two years ago says in a Trans Day of Visibility 2025 interview that vulnerable, unfiltered representation of trans people is more important than ever.
Floridian photojournalist Siobhan McCann has, for the past 31 months, been taking daily portrait pictures of her face, which she then edits together to create a seamless timelapse, as part of a video project to document the physical changes she is experiencing through hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
Described predominantly as a hobby she does “for fun,” the project, which she posts updates of every few months, has received millions of views on Instagram.
The latest update, posted on 24 October 2024, captures 26 months of the 25-year-old’s journey on feminising hormones carefully and painstakingly edited together in a striking sequence.
Speaking exclusively to PinkNews for Trans Day of Visibility, she says that a typical video update takes “a good four or five hours of editing and exporting,” largely to make sure that each photo transition is seamless.
“It’s not a simple workflow; it’s complicated,” she says. “You use [3D rendering software] Blender after, like, a lot of other stuff.
“I think I had seen a few people might have done a timeline similar to this, and when I was coming up with the idea, I think I’d never seen one that was, like, daily and cleanly edited where you’ll notice if you pay attention that their eyes move around. They don’t really stabilise it very well because it’s difficult to do.”
She was inspired by the idea after watching a tutorial on face stabilisation by YouTuber CGMatter, which she still swears by.
“I was just like, okay, I’m just gonna take a picture every day and then use this video as a tutorial to edit it. And every time someone’s asked, how did you do it, I always refer them to that because it’s just the best guide for how to do it.”
Since then, Siobhan says she has rarely skipped a day taking a picture, save for in 2022 when Hurricane Ian struck her home in Florida, causing her to miss a week’s worth of photos 1 month into HRT.
“You can kind of tell, because I look really tired when I come back because it was a rough time,” she says. “But I just [take a photo] right before I brush my teeth every morning, and that’s worked so far. So, besides those days I missed during like a hurricane power blackout, I think I’ve got basically every day.
“Sometimes, if a friend is over and I haven’t taken the picture yet, I’m like, you know, get in there! I think it’s a nice way to document where you’ve been and who you’ve been with.”
Despite the amount of pictures she has taken, each one holds a place of personal significance to Siobhan, who says she can pinpoint the moment several of them were taken.
“I’m a TV news photojournalist, so every day I go out at work and shoot a story and I’ll look back and I can compare the dates of the stories that I shot with the picture that day,” she says. “There’s a picture in there on the day I shot a story about a triple murder. I was wearing a Halo t-shirt that day.”
‘It is raw, it is real, and I think that is very valuable’
One of the most important parts of the project for Siobhan is the vulnerability it conveys. She says that the photos are specifically done without make-up or filters for this reason.
“Doing unmanicured, no make-up, very bare bones like, here is what HRT is doing to my face, that is huge. Nothing against people who do make-up tutorials or fashion advice or whatever, but to do the other side where it’s like, no, here’s what could happen to you. Don’t compare yourself, but here it is.
“Like, in one of the photos, I’m dealing with really bad eczema. That picture is still in the timeline. It is unvarnished, it’s raw, it’s real, and I think that is very valuable.”
While Siobhan says that things like make-up or styling hair are still part of social transitioning, the decision to go without make-up or filters, she says, is about accuracy. Without a raw representation of how she looks every day, she says you would fail to see the finer details.
“If I was to wear make-up on any given day – which I don’t, I can get all sweaty outside – I take it off in the timeline pictures to be accurate, so I can see the changes happening and not just changes I’m doing with make-up techniques… I wanted it to be a science.”
That doesn’t mean Siobhan doesn’t have fun with each update. Keen-eyed viewers may have spotted certain editing techniques and the occasional jokey photo here and there. Her most proud prank was convincing everyone she had shaved a portion of her beard every day over two weeks, when in actuality it was done in an evening.
“I trimmed my moustache off, and I did it frame by frame, doing a little bit and then taking a picture and changing my shirt so it looked real,” she explains. “So it looked like I went through two weeks of, you know, slowly shaving it off from left to right. It was fake of course.
“I love a good hoax… there’s times in there where I do Joker make-up and I do a little time lapse of putting the Joker make-up on, and that’s done all within one day.”
Siobhan McCann says the reception is ‘very sweet’
The reception to the project, beyond its overwhelming positivity, has even inspired some to start medically transitioning, which Siobhan says is “really nice to see,” especially at a time like Trans Day of Visibility.
“It’s very sweet,” she says. “Before I transitioned, has seen timelines, not transitions, where it was two pictures of before and after, and I’d seen people who, I thought, in the before picture, oh my god, that’s how I look right now. I think a daily timelapse is a more extreme version of that.”
The changes are especially shocking to see for herself, especially earlier on. As the changes have stabilised, Siobhan has been more content with how impactful the physical transition has been.
“If you go back, I think I did my first post three months in and I was doing updates every month until about 13/14 months in or something. Now, it’s been about three or four months since I last did an update.
“When I did monthly updates, you would constantly see huge changes, like shaving my beard or growing my hair out. But now I don’t feel the compulsive need to put it together and watch it over and over and be like, ‘wow, I’m changing’ because it’s stabilised a bit.”
Speaking about Trans Day of Visibility, she says that representation for trans people is especially important right now, especially for those with the confidence to be visible.
“I think interacting with people openly and honestly has so much value to changing minds and helping people understand instead of going, oh no, they are closed-minded, they don’t get it … just being kind and friendly, I think, overrides a lot of the propaganda out there.”
Trans Day of Visibility takes place on 31 March each year to celebrate and draw attention to the fight for trans rights.
The post This trans woman has been taking pictures every day since she started hormones, and its incredible appeared first on PinkNews | Latest lesbian, gay, bi and trans news | LGBTQ+ news.