Oh! Hi!: Self-Portrait Shoot.

So, I am back in my last quarter of nursing school, which means I am no longer doing my weekly photo shoots. I didn't realize I would miss it as much as I do, but I know time flies while I'm in school and plan to be back doing photo shoots regularly once the quarter is over.

My idea of how to still do photography while in school is to do self portraits. This is easier than a photo shoot with a model in the sense that I can do it when I have a free moment on my own time, and I don't have to feel like I need to do the post work right away. I can do it when ever I have time. The doing it when I have time thing actually makes me laugh a little, as free time is rare during nursing school.

This last Saturday at around 9 PM I decided I was going to do a self portrait shoot. I was pretty excited, as I haven't done a self portrait since photography school (circa 2003!). I set up my studio lights and came up with a plan. I had a few ideas of what I wanted to do, which always helps. I used my light meter to figure out exposure, but because my light meter was in the garage for so many years, it isn't exact. The light meter more or less gives me a ball park idea of where I need to be with my exposure, and then after a few shots I had the exposure to where I wanted it to be. Finding the exposure was fun, and actually my first shot below was when I was figuring out exposure. It is quite over exposed, but I actually think it works in this shot.

With my camera on a tripod and the timer on, I would get in front of the camera and do the pose I was thinking. Like I said, I had ideas for what I wanted the composition to look like. It is pretty tricky having those ideas and then being the model and trying to figure out where to be in front of the lens in order for the actual image to look like what I have in my head. It was definitely trial and error! But I did get an image with half of my face cropped out like I wanted, and the others ones turned out close to what I was going for as well. The one with my dog Willis wasn't planned. He was simply being a poky puppy and I took that as an invitation to have him 'model'. He sure is cute, isn't he?

Anyway! I hope you enjoy these pictures! I actually have post work to do on the last A Breakthrough in Field Studies video shoot that I took pictures at, as well as a photo shoot I completed of a kitchen my husband built for side work. Hopefully I'll get to those soon so you can have a look!