During every photo challenge, there is always the inevitable week of the self-portrait. I chose this challenge mostly because it didn’t start off with one! However, here it is at 5 weeks in. I don’t necessarily dislike self portraits, however they are, in fact, a gigantic pain in the ass. Since my face is now going to be plastered on the internet, I feel some desire to at least look moderately attractive and wear makeup and do something with my hair. (usually glue it to my head to keep it from misbehaving for 15 minutes) After making myself presentable to the public, I also have to locate my camera, wait another day while it charges up because I’ve left it on again, find my remote shutter, think of some non-lame location, put on pants… the list is endless! But whatever. Enough bitching. I signed up for this 52 week challenge so that I could ::gasp:: actually challenge myself. 😉
So here’s my first one. I liked the background a lot. I also may have cheated and used Jason as a “tripod” and “remote shutter”. In short: Jason took this photo. But I directed him and I was desperate, so I counted it. 😉
My next idea was to take a super cool macro photo of my eyeball with my shiny new macro lens! Great! The only problem is… do you know how hard it is to shove your face like 4″ from the end of the camera lens, have it actually lock focus, and keep your eye in the right spot? Yeah… lots of “trial and error”…meaning I literally only got one shot worth keeping. 😉 I’m using my iphone as a remote shutter again, which is super cool, but you can see my eye reflected in my eye. Weird but kinda neat I guess?
I gave up on the eyeball thing pretty quick… so I tried my hair, which is now dyed teal. It didn’t really work either. The lighting downstairs is super weird.
I had some downtime this afternoon to give this challenge a real shot. (see what I did there?) My setup consisted of: a black sheet tacked to the wall, 2 Amazon special LED floodlights, tripod, Sony A7II, and occasionally a flash. I think I used every makeup tutorial to be had on Pinterest, but here are various images of my face. Some of which I even deem good enough to make their way to Facebook!
I’m really having fun with the colored lighting. It’s a neat effect that I haven’t really gotten to play with before. My next experiment was something I saw online for “faceless self portraits”. You use a longer shutter speed and move your head while the camera takes the photo. It’s actually a lot harder than it sounds. I may have to play with this again.
So yeah, that was a thing. For my next trick, I got tired of accidentally burning my eyes on the floodlights and switched over to my actual flash unit. I think I kinda look like a badass movie vampire in a few of these, which is pretty sick and I’ll take it! 🙂
