For Emilio

A smile.

Day 238 – Side-light

I would have preferred to use Sweetie for this, but he was busy taking the dog to the vet. And it’s not as though I can go drag someone in off the street. Once again, my light study involves me.

Day 236 – Morning Sun and Afternoon Portrait

I usually shoot midday or late afternoon during my work week, but this morning I looked out my office window and saw some awesome morning light. I grabbed my camera and headed out for about five minutes. I love the golden glow.

And late this afternoon I did a little experiment with myself. I’d read this article, The Ultimate Guide to Zone Focusing for Candid Street Photography, at Digital Photography School and wanted to play with it a bit. These were shot at 1600 ISO, f/8, 1/30s. To start, I focused the camera on a spot about five feet away. I then adjusted my camera according to the technique in the article, balanced the camera on my printer and set the timer to release the shutter. Voila! I was in the focal plane!

Day 230 – In my office

The weather outside was overcast and miserable, so I played with my camera and shutter release in my office. This is when it’s nice to have a small office in a quiet part of the building. And a window. A window helps a lot!

Awaiting moderation

Sigh. I changed my screen name from bluelyon to my real name, Carissa. Everything else is the same…blog name, email address, and yet I am relegated to moderation jail. I know this is just a quirk of the WordPress system, and it will cease eventually, but it still bugs me and I just had to vent.

Day 165 – Family Photo

I was playing with lighting again doing some self portraits using diffused flash. This is a cropped version of one of the shots. In the background is the family portrait taken at our wedding.

Day 155 – Black and White

I’ve been wanting to do more work in black and white. I took these of myself today and the goal was creating more dramatic lighting than I usually do.

Funny, in going through the many shots it took me to come up with these three, it’s like I no longer see the photographs as pictures of me. I find myself staring at them with an analytic eye. Are the eyes in focus? Any odd shadows? Nice highlight along the jaw-line. No, that one is off. I like how the chin looks in this one. Nice definition there. Oops, jaw and neck blend together on this one. And so on and so on.

Perhaps that is why I don’t feel odd showing these to you. Me. No make-up. Wrinkles. But to me, it’s just another face I lit and shot.

Day 126 – Scars II

As I mentioned in the comments in Day 70 – Scars, I have a much larger heart surgery* scar than the one shown in that post. I’ve been wanting to photograph it for quite some time and tried to do so in my Intro to Digital Photography class last semester. At the time I had no clue on how to light it so to show it effectively. I’ve learned a bit since then, and so this morning I gave it another go. My goal was to show my entire scar, and these two photos pretty much do so. And I wanted the shots to be artistic, not clinical.

At some point, I’d like to do a series of photos of scars (mine and others). I’m fascinated by them, and the stories they tell.

Lighting was my two soft boxes on either side of me. The one on camera left faced completely right. I place the light at camera right slightly forward of the other and faced it slightly back. ISO 100, f/8, 1/50s. I would have liked the photos to have a bit more contrast but for a first try, I’m okay with these.

* For those of you new to the blog since Day 70, if you are interested in my congenital heart defect history, I’ve covered it at my other blog. You can find all posts HERE, but the main explanation of my defect is HERE).