Day 80 – The eyes have it

The portraits that most intrigue me are those that have a very short focal length where the subject’s eyes are in focus and the rest of their face falls off into progressively softer focus.

For example, see these photos by Fred R. Conrad. They take my breath away.

I love this technique, but I’ve never tried it before. I usually shoot faces (human and animal) at about f/8, saving shorter focal lengths for dramatic depth of field shots with inanimate objects or close-in shots of plants, flowers, or insects. Until today.

Today I tried it on me after getting some inspiration here. Phil Kneen is an amazing photographer…I’ve looked through his entire blog and love it. Go see! The photos in the linked post were shot at f/2. While my lens will not go to f/2 (grrr!), I gave it the old college try. And I’m going to keep working at it (and one of these days, when I’m feeling flush, invest in a better lens).

Shot by my office window. 400 ISO, 37mm, f/4.5. Same photo in B&W and Color. Here I am…wrinkles and all.

Color

I wish the right side of my face wasn’t as cut off as it is…taking a picture of oneself does have its drawbacks.

Day 70 – Scars

I’ve been wanting to shoot my heart-related scars for a while but knew that it would take effective lighting to pull it off. Our next assignment for class is to shoot and print two photos (black and white) using a hot shoe flash both on and off camera. You are getting a sneak peek at what I ‘m pretty sure I’m going to use.

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Day 63 – Shooting for a magazine – Practice!

Our next assignment for our lighting class is to shoot a photo that could be submitted to Edible Reno-Tahoe magazine. The magazine “celebrates the local food culture, season by season.” Published quarterly, the magazine focuses on local restaurants, organic farms, bakeries, etc. I have a friend who is an amazing cook and is going into business with a friend of hers to produce savory preserves and confits under the label, Edible R&D. She has agreed to let me photograph her and her product for this project, so today I practiced one of my photo ideas so that I wouldn’t be fumbling around tomorrow. I grabbed a jar of apple butter from the fridge and got to work.

All photos were shot in our living room using diffused daylight from the large windows directly behind the camera. The idea with these shots was to focus on the product, yet have someone in the shot “pitching” the product so to speak, but not be the focus of the shot. Therefore, the person (in this case, me) is deliberately behind the focal plane of the product. I’ve included several photos to show where I went wrong as well as where I think I went right.

First I set up the product and made sure my camera was exposed properly:

ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/50s © Carissa Snedeker

I then added myself to the picture, but you don’t get to see the early shots. Why? (A) no make-up, and (B) rumpled shirt. However, the shots sans make-up gave me important information, so I ran and changed my shirt and threw on some make-up and got down to it.

Posted in order taken. I like this one, even though the product isn’t straight, but I’m not too happy with how crunched my shoulder looks.

ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/60s © Carissa Snedeker

This one…same shoulder crunch and my blouse is distorted on the right (showing the outline of my pacemaker).

ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/60s © Carissa Snedeker

I really like this shot, and think it may be my favorite. For one thing, it obeys the rule of thirds (which one shouldn’t always get locked into, but should always be mindful of). My face is in the upper third of the photo and to the right, the apple butter pretty much in the middle third and by being to the left helps balance my face, with the foreground making up the bottom third of the picture.

ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/60x © Carissa Snedeker

This one is okay, but I’m not too crazy on how centered I am.

And finally, beware of the disembodied hand. Because I chose to drop my left arm from the portrait and the way I’m holding the jar with my right hand, it doesn’t look like the hand holding the jar even belongs to me. Huge mistake, but I wanted to post it. I’ve actually seen ads in magazines that have mistakes like this, but it is usually the result of Photoshop manipulation gone awry. This one is just a straight up photo boo-boo.

Day 51 – Silhouette

More light play.

I shot these in my dark office. Holding my Speedlite 430EXII towards the wall I used manual mode to have the flash go off at a single point during the ten second exposure. I only set the exposure time so long so I could get in place. ISO 100, f/10, 10s.

I would have liked to have been a tad more to my left. I feel like I’m squished a little to close to the right of the frame, though I do like the light around my left arm.