Self portraits

I’ve been playing with some self-portraits as of late, because I haven’t had any models around. Though I do have some photo sessions lined up with some friends. I decided to buy some new equipment I had been craving for some time. I started with a 50mm prime lens. It’s the standard lens that everyone has, and the fact that the aperture opens to 1.8 should make it nice for concert photography. I know that it’s a cheap lens, and I don’t expect to last decades, but it’s a start. Maybe when it dies, I’ll be rich and can afford the 50mm 1.21.

I also purchased a cheap remote for the camera, enabling me to capture photos from a distance. Unfortunately, the remote is infrared, like a television remote control, which means that it needs a direct line of sight. This requires some hiding on my part. However, this can help considerably with camera shake if I want to capture something at a low shutter speed. I don’t expect to get much use out of it, but it’s already been worth the investment. Running from the tripod to wherever I’m posing was enough to drive me crazy.

My final purchase was what I was most thrilled for. I bought a Bowens Gemini 200 light. It spits out up to 200 joules (or watt seconds in the photo world) and you can dial it down considerably. The flash also includes a modelling light. I bought an umbrella to go with it, but I can’t figure out how to attach it, so the above photo is with a direct light. It’s at the brightest light, shooting at f16, 100 ISO and if I remember correctly the shutter speed was something along the lines of 1/250 of a second. If I didn’t purposely want to wash out half of my face, that means I could’ve put my shutter at some stupid fast speed and still had a good picture. I like this light.

Where the hell is your pupil?

Good question, the unphotoshopped photo can be found here2. I was trying to make a logo in Photoshop for NHTF, which I could possibly use as a watermark, nothing came up that I liked, but then I decided to try to remove those wisps of hair coming down over my mouth, I wasn’t doing too well. I need to work on my Photoshop skills3, instead, I decided that I didn’t need a pupil.

So, who wants to model for me?

1. Probably not. [↩]
2. Well, that’s a lie, I did remove the photo frame that was behind my head. [↩]
3. Or I need to upgrade to CS5, and use those newfangled tools. [↩]