Picturing Yourself

Posted by Philip in Photo Technique

As a photographer, at some point you need to take a picture of yourself.  If for no other reason you don’t have anyone else willing to be pictured.  But what do you do to make your pictures different?  Obviously you put something in the frame that you wouldn’t dare to put in anyone else’s pictures.  You may say that you wouldn’t dare to put yourself in someone else’s pictures, that doesn’t count.  You get setup and then you play.  In my case I have a wireless remote for my camera.  This cost about $9 and is much nicer than setting the timer and trying to run to get in the frame.  There’s about a 3 second delay before the shutter clicks so you can easily compose yourself and then you are ready for the next shot almost like you are shooting from behind the camera.
So here is the progression of my photos.  Almost like sitting in a photobooth.  As you can see I chose to have one of my umbrellas in the background.  I liked the idea of a bright umbrella, but I didn’t want it completely blown out so I changed the delay on my flash so it was in the process of lighting up when the shutter triggered.  I had to make sure there was enough flash on my face to balance out the shot.  You can work wonders in post processing, but if your subject is too dark you will get a lot of nose trying to bring out the detail.

This is the one I picked.  I have an alternate as well.  I don’t know that these are the be-all end-all of self portraits.  But they are the shot I conceived and implemented.  And that’s what’s important in this case.

Nah.  I like this one better… actually I got a better idea.  Great, now it’s time to do another set.