Photoborg: A Self-Portrait
Every once in awhile, when I’m bored and I have some time, I make some self-portraits. I have been kicking around a blog about the function that self-portraits serve for photographers–a long, philosophical discussion about narcissism, self-expression, self-image, etc. Unfortunately, that’s still very nebulous and I haven’t figured out how to put it all together. Suffice it to say, I think self-portraits are important self-teaching tools, and that they are also good for pushing your creativity and inviting experimentation. The final result, above, started as a much simpler, run-of-the-mill self-portrait, until I started playing around and got the idea. I didn’t save a lot of the outtakes, and I didn’t take any behind-the-scenes photos (I should have), but I wanted to walk through the process just a bit.
I started with several variations of the photo at left here. Basically, I wanted to see if I could create a black background in my unchanged living room, just by using a single light with a beauty dish–a large, round lighting modifier that creates soft, even light with a pretty defined cut-off. The beauty dish is useful for a lot of things, and I particularly like it for the way it softens shadows some, but not as much as a softbox would–the light is flattering and soft, but still dramatic.
Anyway, I liked the photos okay, but felt they lacked something–most photographers are not particularly comfortable in front of the camera, and I thought the photos were a little too serious and sort of ordinary. I thought I might pick up one of my cameras and use it in the frame somehow… you know, to reference that I’m a photographer and stuff. Because I often like to have a little fun with my self-portraits, after a few frames, I held the Mamiya C300 in front of my face, referencing a Magritte painting, Le fils de l’homme. I kind of liked the idea, but I couldn’t get the lights right–in particular, the two lenses of the TLR were dead holes without life or depth. When I added a second light to highlight the lenses, I ended up with too much spill on the back wall of my living room, making it visible in the photo. I tried flagging the light and angling it a variety of ways, to no avail. However, this process of modifying your lights and moving them around for different effect, is valuable in learning how to shape light using what you have available.
At some point in the process, it occurred to me to turn the Mamiya sideways, so that the lenses would stand in for my own eyes, making a sort of robotic, photo-related self-portrait that references the fact that I’m a photographer, but also being a bit playful with it. Think of it as inspired by all those posing-with-my-camera-in-the-mirror type photos… you know the ones, that say, “look at me, I’ve got an SLR and I’m serious about photography!”
Problem was, I still couldn’t get any nice catchlights in the lenses (I was using one light at this point, with a reflector on the opposite side for fill) and the camera was casting a dark shadow on the bottom half of my face. It just didn’t look right. Combine that with the fact that I couldn’t see to frame my own self-portrait, and suddenly this project was going south quickly. Still, I couldn’t let the idea go, and started moving lights around again, and then experimenting with different ways of holding the camera and looking in different directions.
I ended up putting one of my lights, with the beauty dish, on the floor angled upwards, to light the bottom of my face. The key light was another strobe with a large rectangular softbox to my side, angled away from the background behind me so that it would wrap on my face some without illuminating the background. After a long process of almost there frames, I finally ended up with the image at the top. What I particularly like about the final photo is how the catchlights in the lenses make them almost look like cat’s eyes, an unintended bonus effect of my light setup.
The takeaway from this self-portrait was pretty valuable–these exercises always help me better understand my lighting techniques so that I can both refine and quickly setup particular lighting scenarios. It also pushed me to be creative and try to come up with something uniquely me–something both interesting and playful, technically proficient without being too serious.
Perhaps most importantly, I now have a new narcissistic Facebook profile photo, which is really what it’s all about. Right?
