Self Portraits/Special Effects

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SPECIAL EFFECTS AND SELF PORTRAITS

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An age-old tradition with artists is the self-portrait (think Van Gogh’s self portrait depicting him having lost part of his left ear – looks like right ear in the painting, but he painted from a mirror image).  Of course, with the ubiquity of smartphones today, self portraits are now known as “selfies”.  I really enjoy testing new lighting techniques out in the studio – and sometimes I need to resort to using myself as the subject.  This gallery presents some of my favorite self-portraits and other creative images.  None of the “special efx” seen in these images were “photo-shopped”.  All the images were done “in-camera”.

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“Your Move”

This is a simple studio image using creative depth of field, and shot with a wide-angle lens.  Nothing fancy, but still pretty cool (in my opinion).

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Juggling Light

Another image created in the studio – this time an approximately 5 second exposure using “rear curtain sync” (look it up – you may find it interesting) and studio flash.  Rear curtain sync is when the flash fires just before the rear curtain portion of the shutter closes (i.e., at the very end of the exposure), allowing the photographer to paint with light prior to the strobe being fired.  A totally dark studio is necessary to create this effect.  Pretty cool, huh!

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“See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil”

This is simply a multiple exposure “selfie” shot in a totally dark studio using one studio flash head, with all three exposures made on one frame – just like we used to do in the old (i.e., film) days.  In this image, I play all three parts!

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My version of “The Scream” by Edvard Munch.

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“Ghostly Self Portrait”

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“Space Dog”

 This is an image created in the studio using a black seamless paper background to which I punched random holes of vary sizes.  Behind the black seamless I placed a roll of white seamless which I lit with bare-bulb studio strobes.  The combination of white seamless and the holes in the black seamless created the starry night effect, resulting in this image.

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