52 Weeks II : June 3rd - June 9th

I got myself a new camera toy...and I'm really excited about it! It's a remote shutter release, which allows me to take a photograph while I'm not at the camera, at any time that I want to. I've been doing self portraits since I was 17 and all those years, I've been using the self-timer on my camera, running back and forth between camera and scene in 10-20 seconds, and running back to press the shutter again. So I've gotten pretty good at getting into various positions in under 10 seconds, but it can be pretty exhausting. I had been meaning to get a remote shutter release for years and I finally stopped procrastinating. I'm so glad I did! I've had it for less than a day and I'm already obsessed. I doubt I'll ever go back to the self-timer again.

So I took my second self portrait in my 52 Weeks Project this evening, and got to try out my new shutter release.

And I didn't do a black and white again!

This is Untitled #2. I'm really trying to get better at lighting and that's why I decided to wait until it got dark out to do this. I ended up using a closet light (that you can see reflected in the window), my porch light, the street light at the end of my driveway, and a sparkler. I have a hard time getting the focus perfect when it's so dark (even with the closet light, I could hardly see anything inside), so I'm not very happy with that. But otherwise, it was so great using the remote shutter release. I'm not sure I would have been able to take this same portrait with the self-timer. Mine only goes up to 20 seconds, and getting outside, up on the railing, with the sparkler going would be extremely difficult in that amount of time. So a big, big Yay! for new camera toys!