Monochrome Self Portraits

I was stuck working in Pocatello this week. Once again I found myself killing time in a lonely hotel room, so naturally, I got out the camera to play. I’m a member of a Facebook and Google+ photography assignment group, and last week’s assignment was a self portrait. I was thinking about how I would take an interesting selfie when the assignment changed. Now Don wants us to create a photograph, but start by sketching out the plan and then share the sketch and the result. So I threw both assignments together and came up with a handful of silly self portraits.

There were a few interesting things to this little project. First, I didn’t have my computer with me, but I wanted to share with the group, so I used my Eye-Fi Mobi Card to take the photos on my camera and have them sent straight to my phone. These photos are straight out of my Canon T3i and shared via my phone, no processing at all.

The next was my sketch. I sketched it on my phone using an app and my small stylus.

Finally, the lighting. I was wanting more isolation from the background, and originally the flash was lighting up the background more than I wanted. So I made a snoot from a Pringles can. I just cut the metal bottom off of the cardboard tube, wiped it out, and stuck it over the front of my flash. For basically free, it worked perfectly.

When I look at the photos now, I see that the exposure was just a little dim. I could have easily fixed that on my phone, but I hadn’t noticed. I’m sharing the originals though, for reference. If I ever use these for something, I will of course pull them into Lightroom and bump the exposure up a little.