Self Portraits and My Set-up/Burning & Dodging Tutorial

With the lack of models I have I decided to take some self portraits tonight.

I had a lot of trouble focusing and tried every trick I could think of. I finally had to have my husband sit on the stool and I focused on his eyes and then sat there.

I still feel like they're not perfectly focused but it was the best I could do for MYSELF!

This is the set-up that I had in my living room (except the stool goes in the middle of the backdrop (obviously) and the camera on the tripod (duh). The lights are hardware store bought clamp lights that I clipped to a lamp I had in the room.

Normally I'd clip my reflector to something on the left of portait area so that the clamp lights would bounce off of it.

(REMEMBER CLICK EACH IMAGE TO VIEW IT LARGER)



Now, on to the self portraits (I did a few different actions on this oneI figured I'd share them a couple):





2 versions of this one:





Yes...more of me...



Cross Processing Action:



And a black and white treament:




I like this pose....see all of these self portraits help me think of poses for when I do portrait sessions. If I like how they came out for me then I will most likely like them for others!



Another action to change the look up of the color:



I love how the Black & White came out for this one!



And lastly a funny one that I randomly did - don't ask me why I pointed at the camera but I did...LOL! Then I applied some fun actions to it to make it look like this:



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And you thought I'd never get to the tutorial I mentioned?

So, before I forget to share...here is a burning & dodging video tutorial I found courtesy of George who share an e-mail that let me to an online photo mag for the UK: