52 Weeks III : June 10th - June 16th

I almost failed this week -- I kind of picked a bad time to start my 52 Weeks Project. For the past two weeks, I've been concentrating most heavily on my summer trip back up to New Jersey (and all the stress of school work I need to do while I'm up there), and having to get my house in order for that. So by the end of today, after running errands and cleaning for nine and a half hours, I remembered that I hadn't taken a self portrait this week. I actually had a pretty intense argument with myself about whether or not to take one, while doing the dishes. Eventually, I just sighed out loud because I didn't want to mess up this soon into the project. So here it is, working title: My Feet are Dead and I Need Coffee.

Normally, I would have dressed up, made sure Loki and Sól were in another room, taken the time to move shoes and iPads out of the frame, make everything perfect. But I decided to be super honest with this one. These are the clothes I've been working in all day, this is how the table looked at that moment. As always, the pets were following my every move around the house. In some ways, this might be the truest self portrait I've ever taken because, although it's not candid, it shows a totally "normal" moment in my private. Moments that few people have ever seen. This is definitely not the version of myself that is seen publicly very often. 

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!

52 Weeks I : May 27th - June 2nd

The 52 Week Self Portrait Project is something I've seen all over the web, from blogs to DeviantART to Flickr, and more. A simple Google search of "52 weeks self portraits" shows all kinds of results from amateur to professional photographers. Some have just started out and others have been doing it for years. The entire idea of the project - take one self portrait every week for a year - has really been inspiring me to practice both photography and posing more. Additionally, this project inspires me to come up with ideas that are simpler in nature, that aren't attached to stories I write out, requiring elaborate edits that stitch together several photographs to make one scene. I want these self portraits (which will be designated specifically as falling into the 52 Week category) to show minimal editing, and never anything that would qualify as photo-manipulation, unlike most of the work I've been doing for the past two years. I want all of the "effects" for these self portraits to be created in real life before the shutter is ever pressed.

Other goals I have for myself are to do more work in color rather than black and white, and to be braver with lighting as well as setting. Any time I'm out driving, I constantly look for areas I think would be great scenery for my photographs, but I hardly ever go back to use them. I want that to stop! If I see a place I think is perfect for an idea, I want to have the guts to do it, whether there are people around or not. A lot of the time, I allow myself to miss out on a great scene because it's public; I don't want to waste opportunities anymore. So, having said all that, here is the first of my 52 Week Self Portrait Project:

{It's black and white, I know.}

Untitled #1, taken in my bedroom sitting against the wall using natural light from a window. I dodged the background to downplay the texture of the wall, burned the molding around the floor to make it darker, and burned parts in the cloak to minimize the appearance of lint and cat hair -- all things that I would have done had this been film. Originally, I really wanted it to be a color shot because I painted my entire face red; however, I just couldn't get the tones looking the way I wanted. I have a lot of practice to do with color indoors. The rest of the editing was desaturating the colors, tweaking with the levels, curves, and contrast, and a slight gaussian blur around the cloak. Normally, I would have wanted to use a texture or part of another photo, so this image looks really empty to me. It might take me some time getting used to not working within my normal habits.

I'm excited to start this new project and hopefully improve my skill. The hardest part is going to be sticking to the time frame, so wish me some luck and perseverance. Thank you for viewing ♥~