A Year of Self-Portraits

This year I've given myself a photography assignment: a self-portrait each week. I'm hoping to learn more about my equipment. I'm going to experiment with lighting. I'm expecting to capture different parts of my personality. I plan to play dress-up and to be a little daring. Sometimes these portraits will be simple selfies taken with my phone's camera. Other times I'll work with my big camera, tripod, and lighting tools.

We're into the 3rd week of the year. Here are my first three self-portraits.

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

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Photo Lessons I Learned:

When I started this project, I wasn't quite sure of the scope. So the first week I took a simple selfie with my phone's camera. I did try a trick my photo teacher suggested: stand in your front doorway. This way you have natural light, but not too harsh due to the porch ceiling. I need to remember to look into the lens instead of looking at the phone's screen.

The second week, I actually had a breakthrough. Adding a wig or a costume brings out the actress in me! The clothing helps inspire the photo. Again, this was a simple selfie. I did pay attention to having a solid-color background. Unfortunately, this photo was taken in my hallway, which has very bad lighting. I had to brighten it up quite a bit in editing, and that blew out the light tones on my chest wall and nose.

The third week I decided that my self-portraits could be more than selfies, and more than playing dress-up. Throughout the year, the photos can also act as a scrapbook of what was going on in my life that week. For this photo, I set up my DSLR on a tripod, and used a wireless remote to take the photo. It was tricky to line up the remote in my hand with the camera's infrared trigger, and then finish posing while the camera fine-focused and took the picture. I wish I'd used a lower f-stop so that the background would be more out of focus. I find those bits of wall and molding sort of distracting. This week, I also decided to experiment with editing in black and white.