#1 Self portraits are not easy, but a lot of fun! Here are some in black and white

[brianwahl]

I was messing around with lighting. I'm using two cheap shop lights I picked up from Lowe's for about $7 each. The first couple shots (the really high contrast ones) are with one light on, and the others are with both lights. Actually - I used a t-shirt draped over them to soften them a bit for some of the shots. I took a bunch, so I'm not sure which shots had which specific setup, as far as how I used my t-shirt "diffusers", haha. I also realized that I look awkward in front of the camera about 95% of the time. I consider myself somewhat photo-genic, but I found it hard to get a natural looking shot when doing these.

Finally, I really am trying to get a feel for how to fine-tune focus when doing these. I don't have a remote or wired shutter, so I used a prop to focus (one of my lights on a stand), marked the spot with a sock (very technical here...), and set the camera to the 12 second timer. I could see myself in the lense, so I had a bit of feedback on what I was doing expression-wise. Anyway - these are fun, and a great learning/teaching tool. I'd encourage you to do some!

PP was done in Lightroom 2.

So which is your favorite? What would you do to improve? Click the photo for a bigger view.









Camera: Pentax K100D
Lens: Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC

Thanks for looking!

[Hayward Taylor]

Hi Brian and Happy New Year .... great results with your make shift setup ... they all look great but I'm sure with a couple more sessions like this, you'll get this baby down to a T ..

[brianwahl]

Originally Posted by Hayward Taylor

Hi Brian and Happy New Year .... great results with your make shift setup ... they all look great but I'm sure with a couple more sessions like this, you'll get this baby down to a T ..

Thanks, Howard! Good to see a fellow Pentax shooter out there - there aren't too many of us.

Happy New Year to you as well.