Day Thirty-Two: It's been a while

It's been a while since my last self portrait.  Technically, of course, the shot from day Twenty-Two http://b3m6c5.blogspot.com/2010/01/day-twenty-two-lady-bug-umbrella.html of me holding the lady bug umbrella is a self portrait.  And before that there was the goofy wideangle shot of me on Day Fourteen http://b3m6c5.blogspot.com/2010/01/day-fourteen-things-are-looking-up.html.  But those are whimsical. 

I've been waiting to shoot a self portrait in the studio using my new Alien Bees beauty dish, a  22 inch round reflector that looks sorta like a large white bowl.  It's called a beauty dish because, when you light someone beautiful, someone with the skin of Kate Winslet, for example, it brings out the beauty with a bang.  It's hard light, like the light from an on camera flash.  Except 1, It's off to my right (camera left) and high, and therefore it's not lighting all of me; 2, it's much bigger and 3, it's not working alone.  There is also a very long softbox (60 inches tall by 12 inches wide) that is filling in some of the hard shadows (a beauty dish will really bring out the pores in the skin) and softening the light overall. 

It is an axiom of photography that if you want something to look interesting, you don't light all of it.  The mix of highlights and shadows are what gives depth and dimension to the subject.  The hard light of the beauty dish gives crispness and pop to my eyes, while the soft fill of the strip box softens the light on my face overall.  But keeping both on the same side lets the camera right side of my face sit mostly in shadow.  And the shadow of my nose across my camera right cheek gives depth to the image.

In addition, I've processed this image to a kind of grunge look.  I watned a cool feeling, with the textures of  my shirt standing out more than the color and so I added some sharpening (clarity, actually) and brought the saturation of the blues down and added a bit of saturation to the greens and yellows to give some color to my eyes.  I didn't really manage to get exactly the look I had in mind, but it's a start.  I am going to be shooting some senior portraits in the Spring and I am working with some different looks to bring to those portraits. 

Another great thing about the 365 is that it lets me work on styles for my paid work, while letting me fufill my photo-a-day pledge.  See you tomorrow.




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