The last photo challenge was a ton of fun! Alas, real life got in the way.. also Christmas and traveling and plain ole laziness… So now that life has settled down a bit, it’s time to start back up! I really enjoy the photo challenges. I find that having one set thing to take pictures of forces me to be more creative and “involved” in the photo process instead of my usual approach of “take photos of random things I like and hope that one works out”. The only way to progress is to practice.. so here goes!
So as I’m sure you’ve noticed, the first week is “self portrait”…. Which is awful. I don’t usually like photos of myself, and I don’t own a wireless shutter, so by the time I have my set perfected and all my settings where I want them, I’m worn out from running back and forth from where I need to be and to the camera and then back again all the while trying to not trip over whatever crap I have scattered around on the floor. Excellent. As usual, I need to clean my house.
The weather was utter crap this weekend, and when it wasn’t we were out riding our bicycles. Therefore I was relegated to taking photos in the garage and my bedroom. I wanted the first self portrait to be dark and moody and badass. Location was limited due to garage size and lens length. I have too little of one and too much of the other. Either way, here I am in front of my truck.
So there you have it. Sometimes I pretend to be a badass…
Due to the aforementioned awful weather I had quite a bit of down time this weekend, so I decided to try another self portrait. The first was so dark and moody, I wanted to see if I couldn’t get a lighter more girly one just for contrast.
This was shot in front of the back patio door because my camera wouldn’t focus close enough for me to stand in front of a white wall. (28mm is as wide as it goes, kids…) I also got to experiment with my external flash. Essentially I blew out the background, photoshopped out the parts that I missed, put on some makeup and put on my best professional model “I don’t know WTH I’m doing” blank stare. meh.
Quite the contrast, eh? The fun part here was playing with high-key and low-key in the same context.
Info on High and Low key photography.
So what all did I learn from this exercise?
1. My external flash will not sync wirelessly with either of my cameras. Meaning it stays on the camera, not remote like I wanted, and is therefore really limited and I want a new one but I’m cheap and will have to learn to work with the natural lighting that rainy, cloudy, dark Washington State will provide. Dangit.
2. I can, in fact, take light photos. I prefer dark and moody, but I’m actually very pleased with how my second self portrait came out.
3. I really don’t like wearing that much makeup. It makes my eyes hurt.
Stay tuned for next week’s installment of “what makes you smile”.