Self-Portraiture

As part of the Project 52, one of the activities was Self-Portraiture.  I've attempted it twice now and I've learned quite a bit.  Self-Portraiture is much harder than you'd think it would be.  I learned a few things that are applicable to both self-portraits and portraits of other people.


1.  Lighting is key.  This is important for any picture, but after my experience trying to take a picture of myself, I understand even more.
1a.  I've learned my apartment does not have good lighting - especially at night when you have to use the overheads and the flash.
1b.  Overhead lights do nothing to flatter a person in a portrait.  It causes very odd shadows.


2.  You have to figure out your good side.  I always thought this was a figure of speech but, alas, it's true.  You have to be able to understand a person's face to make sure you get them at the right angle.


3.  Backgrounds are important.  In my first series of self-portraits, I just used our wall as the backdrop.  It's a white wall so I thought it would be ok.  Unfortunately, with the lighting, the wall looks gray and gross.  The next time, I used a chair as the background and it turned out better.  You can buy special backgrounds for your studio or use nice fabric.  It's important to look at all your surroundings when out take portraits.

4.  Make-up is important.  No amount of photoshopping will fix an oily face (or maybe it will and I just don't know how to do it).

5.  Be creative.  When you're behind the camera, it's easy to be creative because it's not you in the picture.  You're not putting yourself out there.  With self-portraiture, it's much more personal.  You want to make sure you look good (especially if you'll be sharing on your blog) but sometimes that impedes you from experimenting.  I didn't experiment as much as I could have.  Maybe one day I'll talk HA into taking me out of the apartment so I can experiment in some fun locations.

I've include below a few of the pictures I took.  I'm not happy with any of them but I've learned alot from them that I can hopefully carry forward into some other shots that I might do.

No Make-up, bad background - not good

After some post-processing.  I look like I've been fake baking.

This one is for Mom so she can see I do this even when I'm by myself.

Lesson learned - do NOT lean back.  Chin always up - I'm not 18 anymore.

Looking up and into the camera is always universally flattering.  However, the overhead lights creating shadows under the eyes is not.

Project 52 - Week 6

The theme for Week 6 was "Words".  I'm going to be honest, I wasn't really feeling the theme last week and, well, I didn't even try to take some pictures. 

However, this past weekend in Canberra, the multi-cultural festival was being held.  This is one of HA's favorite weekends of the year, so on Saturday evening, we headed out.  When I attended the event two years ago, it was fairly busy but not so overly busy that you wanted to shoot people.  Unfortunately, I couldn't say that about this year.  The festival was crammed with people - which is good for Canberra - not so good for someone who hates crowds.

My point is, this festival was very busy and parking in downtown Canberra is at a premium.  On the walk home, HA and I were getting a kick out of how all the Aussie's were parking wherever they could - this includes on sidewalks and grass areas.  Which led me to this picture.  I took it with my iphone so it's not great quality.



Words - that people don't pay attention to

This is definitely an Aussie trait.  They will park anywhere that is available without repercussion of a ticket.  It can get quite funny.

Also while I was out walking the lake this weekend, I came across this:

You can't really tell in this picture, but it's clear that the trolley has been in the lake for some time - it's quite rusted.  How it got pulled out of the water, I'm not real sure.  But it's now sitting in the grass by the lake.  I took this picture with the Hipstamatic app on my iphone.

Project 52 - Week 5

This week's theme for the Project 52 was "Muse".  I'm still experimenting to find my style and to be quite honest, to find the time to practice.  The themes for the Project 52 don't come out in Australia until late on Saturday so that generally leaves me Sunday as a free day to try and take pictures.  Otherwise, I have to take the pictures in the evening after work.  I'm not quick to come up with ideas for the theme.  Quite often HA will provide me with an idea.  Getting good at photography is hard work and if you don't have an eye for the composition, it's very difficult.

This past weekend, I was in Sydney.  Friday night I was at a concert for Grinderman and on Saturday, I saw "Love, Loss, and What I Wore" at the Opera House with my friend LB - which, by the way, I HIGHLY recommend.  The show was fantastic - I would love to see the American version.  While we were in Sydney, we also went to the zoo and Watson's Bay.  Both areas of Sydney have phenomenal views.  Every time I go to Sydney, I am so inspired and wish I knew how to take those breathtaking landscapes pictures that you find in stores.  Sydney is one of the reasons I wanted to learn to take good pictures.  So in that vein, I decided to have the city of Sydney as my Muse.



I'm finding that I like my pictures with a border - I feel like they make the picture pop more.  At the same time, I think I need to keep playing with my style to find what suits me.

What's your muse?

Project 52 - Week 4

This week's theme with the MCP Actions Project 52 was Soothing Repetition.  I wasn't sure if I'd participate with that theme this week but after some thought I decided to try and shoot for the theme.  I spent some time looking through some of the pictures which were already uploaded b/c I didn't want to do something that someone had already done.  There were a number of pictures around food - ice cream, soda, coffee - and there were things like brushing your hair.

I spent some time thinking about what would be repetitious and soothing.  This brought me to running.  I hadn't seen a picture for running uploaded yet and I know quite a few people that would call running soothing (certainly not me!). 

I recruited HA (again!) to be the model.  It was a beautiful day in Canberra again and HA and I went out to the lake to try and get a shot.  I played with a few different perspectives.  As it turns out, the one I liked the best was the very first shot I took.  It's in black and white but I think that it works for the evening sun that's coming in from the side.



Next week's theme hasn't been posted yet!  Stay tuned!

Project 52 - Week 3

The theme for this weeks Project 52 was "Shades of Grey".  I had this vision of finding someone with beautiful thick grey hair and getting an amazing picture.  Unfortunately, I don't know anyone with grey hair.  Or, at least, I don't know them well enough to be like "hey, can I take pictures of your grey hair?"

So I thought all week about what I wanted to do.  I wanted to take a picture that would highlight the many shades of grey but also be something that wouldn't require traveling somewhere or alot of setup time.

On top of that, I didn't have much time this week.  I had things scheduled for every night after work so it also needed to be a picture I could take at home and wouldn't need alot of natural sunlight.

So, Thursday night I took the easy way out and bought some beautiful gerber daisies from the supermarket and headed home to try and do something creative with them.  Unfortunately, the boys called and I ended up getting drinks until late in the evening Thursday.  I had plans to go watch the Australian Open that weekend so Friday rolled around and I was frantically packing so we could catch our plane.  I took a few pics of the flowers, converted them to black and white and uploaded to Flickr so that I could have an entry.  It didn't turn out too badly for a quick 10 minutes of work.  What do you think?



This week's theme is "Soothing Repetition".  I'm not sure how I like this theme. I may go my own way this week.  Stay tuned!

Project 52 - Week 2

This weekend, I got to babysit for my friend Leah.  Her son Silas is one of the cutest and most chilled out kids I know.  He's 13 months old, but while I was babysitting, all I had to do was make sure he didn't put his finger in a socket.  Otherwise, he entertained himself.

While I was babysitting, I thought I might practice taking some pictures.  Photographing HA is easy cause he poses however I tell him to but children are a completely different story.  They move around alot more and they decide when they want to smile.

I had hoped the weather would be nice, but, in true Aussie fashion, it was raining.  I took some pictures of him in the apartment but alot of them had very messy backgrounds so they weren't great.  However, I did get a few cute ones.

The one below is my favorite from the session.  I think he was looking at HA at the time trying to decide if he was ok with him being there or not.  Silas has very expressive eyes.  In nearly all the pictures I got, you can look at it and make up what he's thinking based on his expression.

ISO:800
1/640
f5.3
Focal Length: 165mm
Add Color Pop 2 action by thecoffeeshopblog.com and an additional vignette

I'm also participating in a group Project 52 with MCP Actions.  They'll provide a theme every week and you provide the picture.  This week's theme is "Illustrate a Song". I'm still working out what I can do for this theme.  If I come up with a picture, I'll post it later this week.