I've been writing this blog since 2005. I have had a number of content specific blogs in the past, but decided in 2013 to consolidate them all back into PJMixer. You'll find photo projects, movie reviews, new music and general thoughts about my life. [My photographs on this web site are protected by Creative Common licensing and cannot be used for commercial purposes without permission].
Friday, October 22, 2010
Forty six
I thought a self-portrait was appropriate for my birthday. Like yesterday's shot I set up my Nikon's flash controls in commander mode to use on the pop-up and the external Speedlight. This time the Speedlight was sitting on a mini-trouble to the left of the camera. I used the diffuser I usually have on the Speedlight to soften the light a little from the pop-up. I then used a warm gold reflector to the right of the camera to fill in the shadows better on the right of my nose (although there's still a small shadow there from my cheek perhaps). If I had a third flash unit, I'd probably even out the lighting behind me. I didn't do anything too fancy trying to get the focus right (even shooting at f2.8 with my 50mm), I just took a lot and tried to have my eyes focused on the lens rather than worrying about being centred (which sometimes but my nose in and eyes out of sharp focus). A trick I did use for composition was that as I was looking into the lens (and the via the mirror thru the viewfinder I could see a clear line between dark and light that I used to get the height right. I used in-camera black & white with a green filter. I still think the shot is a little dark, but in B&W mode, unfortunately there's no D-Lighting option. With all that setup, I still did two cheats, a slight crop to show a little less of my forehead (and there's a lot of it) and spot-healed a blemish (I can do that, it's my birthday).
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