Saturday, April 4, 2015

Self Portrait Week 13: Finding Emo

Many find Holy Week a week full of EMOtion.


---

Photo Lessons I learned:

For this week's photo, I used some of the home studio techniques I learned last week, with a few twists. I took the photo in our daylight basement with the window light coming in the left side of the photo as fill light. I used the same key light with umbrella setup as last week, placing it to the right of the camera (see the catch lights in my eyes?) I added a reflector to the left of the camera to bounce some light up under my jaw. I used an "under cabinet" kitchen light on the floor behind the subject as a backlight to illuminate the grey felt. That worked really well.

Then I played with camera angle and costume. I wore all black with safety pins holding the hoody together at the neck. It's quite a trick to put harsh black make-up on wrinkly 57 year old skin! I'm rather proud of how that came out.

I put my camera on a tripod, but had the front legs lower than the back leg to the camera was angled down. For posing, I tried some whole-body shots, some upper body shots, and then some close-ups. Figuring out the posing angles is one of the toughest parts of this self-assignment! For this final shot, I went with this extreme close-up. I thought it captured the haunted mood I was going for just right. I have the camera higher than my head, then looked up into the camera.

I used a wired remote shutter button (which I'm really starting to love!) and my kit lens.

In editing, I lightened some of the shadows so that some individual strands of hair could be seen especially on the left. I brightened my eyes just a smidge and did a little color correction. I also did a tiny bit of cropping so that the edge of my chin was not resting on the edge of the photo (Nick taught me about how that might add unwanted tension to a photo).

F5 ... 1/50 sec ... ISO 640 ... 44mm ... no flash

I'm quite pleased with this week's outcome!

No comments: