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Well i was kinda bored this afternoon had done all the school stuff, and decided to go do a self portrait, doinga self portrait while playing with lights + a moving sun is quite hard.

1st of i needed to get the shutter tight, which made me just realise why did i shoot with f5.6. Forgot to change that from last sesion. Manualy focusing came down to guessing as i didnt a subject to place in my place!

2nd. I had to run back and forth adjusting the lights for the lightning that i wanted to and the postion!

Overall i did pretty good i think, the reason i whent for a black and white is because the sun and the lights i was using was messng with the WB big time! so i thought eeh doesnt matter!

this is my first true candid portrait, what do you all think?

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I think it came out perfect! The lighting is excellent and black and white works really well!

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Graham
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Like I said in my post on different colour tones(which you have viewed), B/W is awesome for showing human emotions. This pic is just great. I thought it might have been better if you placed a little more digital light at your legs.

SnS

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Hey guys! thanks for the kind words, maybe i m just getting better at this. I really liked the shot, really liked it. Probably my fav of the month or something like that to be honest or in a very long time!

Well why would i show the legs when its a portrait SnS that would just knock of the eyes from the main subject in this case! Plus i dont have that many lights that i can just go about messing around with all the small placeses!

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Thats a really good self portrait, let-alone portrait.

Depending on how far the camera was from you you could have sat down and then half pressed the shutter to AF with you there and then (you could have had it set 2 second timer) pressed the shutter all the way it'd been focused and you woulda been done.

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Jake O'Connell, 40D Crew
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"Photography isn't so much about the results as it is the collective experience, your interactions with people and with the world"

SnS - I'm not sure where you learnt your portraiture and lighting!!!

Alex, you've excelled yourself here. Nothing wrong here at all. If it were my work, I'd only perhaps make it a little brighter in the centre and have the light extend to the fingertips, but we're talking small amounts here, and is actually recoverable by PP.

And all without a tripod. Fantastic.

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Nikonian

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Yeah it was kinda hard for me to find a location that worked, and not having a tripod around for shots like these is quite tricky, but i got a bunch of books stacked them up imageded where i was going to be sitting and then snaped a shot of the nothing in it too se how the shutter played out!

I couldnt AF and reach the camera it was about 1m away or something! it was just hard i tried putting a stuffed animal, but it just dodnt work haha

Ed, I think when i was lining up myself for the shot i was blocking the light that was supposed to hit my torso with my left arm, which is a bummer. I have another shot yet to be turned into black and white where my hands are viseable, i didnt go for that one because i just though it wasnt suting. Plus it looked really big . As i was shooting at 18mm i decided to go for the darker one!

I think i just got really lucky when it came to the postion of the sun, and when it was shining through the window. It wasnt a bright day out it was rather cloudy, so that helped a bit to the mood that i wanted to achive, but i think now that i can try to move onto diffrent people and have shots taken of them.

EDIT: guys thanks, these kinds words are the fuel to my non stop photographing! cheers!

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It's been long known, and I've said it in the forum as well that cloudy days will bring the best natural light for photography (it's on one of your threads SnS).

I don't champion AF for portraiture. It becomes a time where you really need to manually focus (especially if you want wafer thin DoF but sharp eyes), and you probably should have used MF.

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Nikonian

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Isnt it that the clouds basicly work as a difuser for the sun? giving a soft light? That sounds pretty reasneable for me!

Its kinda of funny, as i posted this shot on my flick i have gottena few calls from my friends asking me to photograph them! So i guessed i kinda of pulled it of this time

I just have a question, when shooting portrait are you aiming for get the sharp eys is that the main focus point?

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Really nice. Very dark mood indeed, gives you some hints about your character...



Yeap, the first subject is the eyes, then you can show some details about surroundings if there's something useful to show, for example, if you shoot a fisherman, you can include some tools (nets, boats and other stuff) always thinking on your main subject. You can take a photo with your subject looking somewhere else, but you have to emphasize the look. The rest is up to you and your imagination

Nice work

Cheers

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Feel free to elaborate on that i m very happy person on the other hand but i like moody shots, and the whole idea to portrai lonlynes...

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Very nice shot! How did you shoot it? With a remote control of some sort?

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The self time! 10 seconds to run into postion and just hope for the best! took a few times to get the postion i wanted to but it keept me busy for a few hours playing around with the light and whot not

Well i placed my camera on a bunch of books and then i placed that "sofa couch" bench thing where the light was coming down from the window, and then i grabed those 2 lamps that you can see in my studio thread and placed one going from the bottom towards my face, and another one going froma bit higher up towards my torso, now i had 3 light sources on hitting me from the back giving of the nice shine on my left side or the right side of the image with and also front lightining coming from the rather weak lamps! i could have smoothen out the shadow by using a difuser bur i really like the hard shadows! give the image alot of character

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That's the problem, sadly. I never got to learn properly!

SnS

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.: Sony DT 18-70mm :: Sony 75-300mm :: Tamron 90mm f/2.8 Macro 1:1 :: Minolta 24mm f/2.8 :: Sony 50mm f/1.8 :: Samyang 8mm f/3.5 fisheye :: SLIK Pro 330DX :: Manfrotto 496RC2 :.


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SnS all you gotta do is read a bit about it and you will understand it, hopefully

Well after from some input on the image and a great guid, i decided to give the post processing another go. Restored a tad of the light on the hands thus making them more viseable, some one pointed out to me, which i nevere really though myself that as i m looking down it made them follow the image down and see what i m looking at. This is something that didnt cross my head but sounds quite obvious when you really think about it!

Whent for a tighter crop, after some discussion the size seems a bit odd for an image which made it please but it was just odd !

Broight back the "outher" shadow so to speak in a bit closer removing the eye form what was the background and making it focus more on the subject a.k.a. me

here we go for the new version!

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