5 minute self portrait

It's always a good thing to keep practising, whatever your art may be. In my case this is of course photography ;) I haven't had a model sit/stand for me for quite some time, that's why I decided to do another self portrait.

It took me about 10 minutes to set up, and then another 5 to take the photo.

Read on after the jump >>>




To take a self portrait you just need yourself and that is about the easy part of it.
It might sound quite simple, just put the camera on a tripod, set the timer, sit down and pose!
Well that is indeed the easy part of it all. The hard part is visualising the light and focusing the lens. Imagine visualising how the light will look on a model if all you have is the schema below.

It is difficult because nothing is fixed, while on the other hand everything is fixed. That sounds like paradox, but it isn't.
In a normal photographer/model situation it is easy to adjust the light when you're not satisfied with it because you can follow the light from the flash to the model (just look alongside the flash to see whether or not it is positioned correctly). The model is fixed so you can fix the lights.
That was the part that isn't fixed when you want to look at it. On the other hand it has to be fixed the moment you let the camera take the shot. You can't move about to make last second adjustments. No, from the moment you press the shutter everything is fixed for the ten seconds it takes the timer.
This brings us to the focussing. This is to say "hardish". You have put something in the place of where you will be, focus on this, leave the focus on manual, and then the hardest part, be sure you will be in the right place so that your face will be within the Depth of Field. This last thing I will explain in a later post, you only need to know that there is always a specific distance from the lens when things start to be sharp/in focus, and that this distance also has an end (hence the word field).

As you can see from the photo above, that is something I seldom get right the first try! But after a few tries I did.

So then in a couple of minutes I get it right and this is the result. I know, I know, not the prettiest fish in the sea, but even ugly fish are sometimes worth taken a photo of! ;)
So the photo to the left is the end product of only 15 min and it is easy once you know how.

Hope you liked reading the post!




P.S. The worst thing for me about self portraits is the having to smile incessantly for seconds on end....