Self Portrait

I recently had a project through the photo club to create a self portrait. We saw many examples exhibited - they ranged from the mundane to excellent images that obviously required much thought and skill in their execution.

I am posting this because, as a photographer I rarely get to the other side of the camera. Here is my example of what I consider an average entry into the topic of self portrait.



This image was created by cutting a circular image out of a photo of me, and copying it as a layer over the image of the camera - positioning it right over the lens. I selected the portrait layer and softened the edges a bit so the edge was not hard. I also used the distort > lens tool to slightly alter the portrait so it bulged out in the middle - as it was on a curved surface. I then adjusted the opacity of the portrait layer to 60% so the natural lens reflections would show through. (I darkened the highlights of the lens reflections as well) The last step was to merge the layers.

A friend of mine (and awesome photographer), John MacLean, has a great photo which he created for the assignment, he has given me permission to show it here.



I love this!!!

3 Light setup

In the process of taking the previously posted photos, I shot a few 'setup' shots. Here are the three lights , one at a time to show each effect, and how the final setup comes together.


...and here is a basic diagram of the above (or close to it)...

Faces of Alex

When I was shooting the kids 'school' photos the other day - I had to promise Alex that he could make faces for some of the photos. He made a lot of faces - they were awesome! We got the requisite portraits, and some funny faces as an added bonus. We just had to make a composite of a few!



I sampled the colours of the backdrop and shirt to make the background.

My own School photos!

A day off afforded me some time to shoot my own kids 'school' photos - they turned out well. Hope's shot is straight out of the camera!




And this one of Alex had only a minor exposure adjustment.



These were shot with my Canon 50D, with 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 lens. I had 2 umbrellas - one main and one fill (with flashes in them), and a flash on the background.