52 Self Portraits: Week 8

At the rate I'm going, I won't be done with this project for 3 years!

Here's my latest installment. I was excited to finally be able to play with my camera outside. The weather was nice with little breeze.

Some things that are wrong with this picture are:

• Flash not balanced with the natural light. I need to get some gels.
• I wanted the background to go darker than this.. It looked the way I wanted on the camera's LCD.

As always, comments and criticisms are very welcome!

52 Self Portraits: Week 7 (Catching Up)

These photos are much closer to what I was trying to achieve. What I'm missing in my arsenal is the ability to color my lights better and keep my light pattern tight. I didn't have as much control over the difference in the background and foreground lighting that I want. Either too much light from the foreground spilled onto the background, or the long exposure time due to hot, continuous lighting in the foreground allowed too much through in the background.

I made great use out of my "Stick-in-a-Cans". See my set up shot here.

My wife took our mop in to get converted back into a dog today, so keep an eye out for a session with her (the dog) soon.

52 Self Portraits: Week 6

I think I'm about two weeks late for this one. I had so much to do around the house the last couple of weeks, I couldn't spend the time I needed to get some photos.

I had an idea for this photo that I found on the Ikea website. Unfortunately I'm not able to find it. It was is a photo with a chair in the foreground lit by a lamp just behind it. The photo was white balanced for the tungsten bulb in the lamp, blue color cast on the background. I wasn't able to achieve it with this photo, so, this week's photo (Week 7) is another attempt at it.

A friend from Church had called to ask if I'd meet him for breakfast the next morning while I was working on my self portrait project for the week. I thought it would a perfect opportunity to get some "candid" shots of myself, as if that's possible.... At least, I wasn't concentrating as much on posing as I was talking on the phone. I certainly wouldn't pick up the phone and pretend to be on it!

Keep an eye out for Week 7 very shortly (next day or so). I'm closer to what I wanted to achieve with that one, but not quite.

UPDATE: Here are the images I was inspired by. I suspect I'll need a tighter light pattern from my CTO'd flash in order to accomplish the look I'm going for. My gold reflective umbrella spills too much light onto the background making it difficult to control the lighting in that area. One of my next purchases will likely be the Lumiquest FXtra gel holder for each of my flashes. I may even spring for a Soft Box III.

52 Self Portraits: Week 5

Here we are on week 5 of my "52 Self Portraits" project and I'm still stuck on the black backdrop. I've been enjoying using it, but I'm hoping next week to get outside and do my portrait or switch to a white sheet for a while. We'll see how it goes... Now that I finally have both flashes off camera, I have a little more flexibility in my set ups.

This shot, I had a bare flash directed toward the black sheet from an angle in order to add some dimension to the backdrop. To my left is a silver reflector and my right is a flash bounced in a gold umbrella.

Additional Shots...

Feel free to leave your comments here or on Steve Paxton's forum.

52 Self Portraits: Week 4

This was supposed to be a two light portrait. Unfortunately, I didn't read the red text on the hot shoe adapter when I added it to my cart! Oh well.. Hopefully I'll be able to find the right PC to Hot Shoe Adapter in town tomorrow.

The light is a 580ex II bounced out of a gold umbrella... I wanted to play with the gold umbrella and didn't feel like converting it to silver or putting my other umbrella on. I white balanced in UF Raw.

In processing, I decided I'd try the cross process look, so I found a tutorial online and saved my curve for future use. I also added a slight vignette.

As always, the additional shots can be viewed on Steve Paxton's photography forum.

52 Self Portraits: Week 3

I wasn't sure what I was going to do this week. I have already started running out of ideas.

I like the black background and using the smaller radius of light to fade things into the shadows. I also like having a prop, such as my guitars, in the photos. This week, I was sitting on the couch in the living room wondering what I was going to do. The guitar came to mind then, somehow, the lamp came to mind. It was fun trying to incorporate the lamp in the photo. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to achieve what I was shooting for. I wanted the light from the lamp shade to spill onto the background, creating a cone of light. It didn't work... I'll have to try it again.

Here's the photo I chose to use this week....

Click Here for an additional shot.

52 Self Portraits: Week 1 & 2

I was thinking about ways I could force myself to learn lighting using my small strobes, or flashes and decided on a '52 Self Portraits' project. The idea is that after the first few photos, it will become more challenging to light myself in new ways. I'll be forced to think and work harder and experiment with things. So, I'm committing to doing 52 self portraits, one a week for an entire year.

Here is week 1:

Week 2:

You'll notice that if you follow the link for "Week 2", you will find some additional photos. As I process each session, I'll pick a couple of photos that I liked, but weren't quite what I was looking for. There will be something interesting to me about them and I will post them on Steve Paxton's forum exclusively.

Enjoy and feel free to comment here or on the forum.