Day Thirty-Eight: Super Bowl Sunday!!!

I am a huge football (NYG) fan and I am ready for some football. 

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Day Thirty-Seven: Lunch (a Movie)

While technically this project is about taking photos, today Molly and I made the first of a series of movies we have planned.  As you can see, our film making is pretty rudimentary, however we figured out how to use the software that comes with the Flip camcorder and know how to do things better the next go round.  The still at the top here is a frame taken from the movie, so the photo-a-day requirement is sastisfied.  While the photo is somewhat boring, our short film is, we hope, entertaining.  Please check it out on our brand new Flip Channel:  Molly & Me Productions



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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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Day Twenty-Two: Lady Bug Umbrella

It was cold and gray today so I decided to head into the studio to shoot.  This was just a quickie, with fluoresent strip lights from the left front and right rear.  Simple.  Need to help make dinner and then it's family movie night.  Til tomorrow...

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Day Fourteen: Things are looking up.

Finally today it was warm enough to actually enjoy some time shooting outside. I went off this afternoon with my 10-20mm zoom lens, a flash and a plan. And I executed...got some perfectly pleasant self portraits of me lit against a darkened background and dramatic sky. Nice. But kind of boring, and kind of in my niche. And I need to save the things I know I can do quickly and easily for the days when I am up against it. I have a few favorite places and favorite approaches that I am saving for days when I need to pull something out...days when my motivation may be low or I'm pressed for time.

So instead today, I am using this image. I took it under an archway at St. Barnabas Greek Orthodox Church on Fayetteville Road. It's an architechtually beautiful new church and I've been shooting there since it was just an unshelled steel structure. For this image, I put my camera with the zoom set to 10mm on the ground pointing up at the arch and then leaned over into the frame. I took about 10 of these from sligtly differenn angles. This is the one I liked the best.

Strobist: Natural light (again).

Day Eight: Batman

Had some time to play in the studio this afternoon and decided to use my fluorescent strip work lights and a black background. I shot several different setups over the course of 90 minutes, eventually adding in two Nikon flashes to give my face and the batman logo some pop and to light the black background up to a pleasant gray. Not much else to say. Friday night is family movie night around here, so this is short and sweet.

Strobist: Fluorsecent work lights hung from light stands in vertical orientation, right and left and behind. These define the sides of my face and keep separation of my black turtleneck from the background. There are two large silver refelectors camera righ and left front just out of frame bouncing the worklights on the front of my face. Key is an SB800 with a grid (ala Zack Arias, I painted in the insdie of a Fong diffuser black and then bungeed a Buff 10 degree grid over the top.) this is on a boom and about a foot off the floor firing up at my face at 1/16th power. There are a few strips of black gaffer tape over parts of the grid to break the light up a little and keep dimension on my face. The background (in addition to spill from the worklights) is lit by an SB900 with a stofen on the floor behind me at 1/4 power.

Day Three: One more (sorta) out of the blue

Here, I've shot on the same background as yesterday. Lazy? In part. But after working on some of the images from yesterday, I discovered that I really liked the blue backdrop in black and white. And since this has a very different feel from Day Two's post...and since it WAS already setup...

Strobist: AB1600 in Westcott Apollo (with bottom half masked, making it a 28 in wide by 14 in tall lightbox) camera right and low. AB800 camera with 40 degree grid camera left and behind to separate and highlight side of face and brim of hat.

Here is one of Day Two's rejects processed in black and white that I like:

Day One: No Pressure

I've been trying to think about the photo I'd use to start this project. Our New Year's Day tradition around here is to tackle the clutter. We spent the morning and early afternoon organizing the storage area and the garage, with a little cleaning up in the studio as well. I thought about trying to photograph that process, but wanted to get it done and get it behind me and then turn to taking the kick-off photo. I gave some thought to going down town, and to a host of other locations, but in the end I decided to just take a self portrait of me relaxing, beer in hand, after finishing our organizational mission for the day. I know it's been noted that a journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step. My journey of 365 days, apparently, starts sitting down. Who knew?

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Introduction

This is me. Taken a few months ago. Later today (January 1, 2010) I'll be posting my first photo to kick off my 365 project. My main blog is on Wordpress (www.bmcportraits.wordpress.com/) but I wanted to try Blogger for this project. Anyway...they'll likely be a lot of self portraits (as 365 days is a big commitment and there will no doubt be days that I either shoot me, or drop the ball. I expect to learn a lot and to be a better photographer at the other end. I hope you'll take the journey with me and offer words of support now and again...a little encouragement will no doubt be a great help during the slumps that must inevitably come. Dustin Diaz (http://photography.dustindiaz.com/) has just completed an impressive 365 for which he has earned (and deserved) great kudos. The quality level from end to end is the daunting thing for me...he delivered and I am inspired (and a tad awed) by that. Still, there are a number of similar images of him, at night, in SF, on the street/sidewalk. And I don't live in SF...here in Durham, it isn't that easy to find big city bokeh to carry a self portrait.

Back in a few hours....