Self Portrait
At some stage most photographers have a go at a creative Self Portrait. Well, It was not something that was really on my to-do list, but as it was this Months challenge over at 4/3 Photo I decided to jump right in and at have a go.
A Self portrait is a very challenging photo for a lot of reasons. Probably the biggest reason is that most photographers prefer to be on the other side of the Camera - and let me tell you, I fall firmly in that camp!
The next challenge is to produce a photo that is exactly how you want to be depicted - and you are certainly your own worst critic!
So, the first thing to do was to consider the whole process and come up with a pose, framing and lighting you are happy with.
I thought about it and decided that I wanted the photo of me to be both revealing, concealing, dark and light. Now with just these 4 things it meant I had to really challenge myself and create.
So, the revealing/concealing led me to do a head only shot, with me looking around 120 degrees away from the camera. With this particular pose, I could reveal a little and Conceal a whole lot! There was also another part of the concealing within the settings I chose to do the photo - but more about that later on.
Now, the dark and light - this all comes down to the lighting setup.
Doing lit portrait shots is something that I have only done a small amount of, but as I am familiar with my flashes and have radio triggers, I knew with a little bit of experimentation I could get the shot that I wanted.
In order to get even more reveal/conceal with the Light and Dark, I chose to point a Flash directly into my face. It was positioned at about an 11 O'clock position to me so it was slightly towards the Camera. Now, in order to only reveal what I wanted, I further modified the light by putting a snoot on the flash - I used an A4 piece of paper wrapped around it so that the light from the flash would be VERY direct and right into the subject (my face). This flash was around 1.5metres away from me, and hidden behind a wall from the Camera.
Now, I also added a 2nd flash which is not very obvious from the photo.
The 2nd flash was positioned at the 5 O'clock position (behind me) and was aimed up at the ceiling to add just a small amount of overall fill lighting.
It took me about 90 minutes and only about 25 photos in setting up, positioning myself, shooting the image (with an IR remote control), checking the shot, making adjustments etc, etc, etc.....
I added another dimension to the shot as well - as between the Camera and me, I used a 6x8" Mat that I had cut and hung it from a doorframe. In the actual photo I shot thru the hole in the mat to the subject. I actually tried using a 3rd flash to illuminate the mat, but that was simply something that didn't work in the overall scheme of things.
Now, the Camera Settings.
I shot this fully Manual as I needed total control over every aspect of the shot.
100 ISO, using my 50-200mm Zoom I ended up using 62mm Focal length. I experimented with the Aperture and settled on F8, and with my lighting setup ended up shooting at 1/125sec. Remember I said before about concealing, the F8 gave me around 13cm Depth of Field. With 13cm, I was able to get the near parts of my face very sharp, but managed to still get a bit of blur on the most distant parts of my face. My eye is very sharp, but going away towards my nose it is clearly not in Focus.
The Camera was set up on the Tripod and it ended up being 1.5m away from me for the picture.
After shooting, I processed the image in RSP and did both a colour and a B/W version. It was a close call, but I decided to use the colour version for the Monthly competition.
Ok, lets take a look at the final Result.
The Black and White Version -
The Colour Version that I entered - 
And finally, a snapshot of the setup - this gives an idea of how everything was set up, but does not show where the 2 flashes were.
