Ideas for self portraits

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Slothmeister

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247
Name
Adam
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Hey guys, so im looking at doing some self portraits but have little to no imagination so was looking for some ideas for some kind of quirky portraits.

Also any tips of cracking on with these shots, what settings to use.

My equipment:
Nikon D70
50mm 1.8
18-70mm
70-300
Sigma Flash Gun

Sorry if its a bit of a open ended question, thanks.
 
God, im a proper dunderhead, why i didn't think of looking on flickr i have no idea. Lol, thanks
 
In college we have just done a transformational self portrait and people were coming out with great ideas, Hannibal Lecter, Grim Reaper, Zombie, Geisha, there were quite a lot of them.

Also bare in mind that after Halloween all the costumes go really cheap and so you could easily pick up some bargains.

Just out of interest, why are you doing a self portrait? is it for a course you're doing or is it purely for experimentation?

:)
 
mastertrinity said:
Just out of interest, why are you doing a self portrait? is it for a course you're doing or is it purely for experimentation?

:)
Click to expand...

Why not? Was bored one evening and thought i'd give it a bash. THought i'd try something other than the normal landscapes that i seem to concentrate on.
 
Slothmeister said:
Why not? Was bored one evening and thought i'd give it a bash. THought i'd try something other than the normal landscapes that i seem to concentrate on.
Click to expand...

that's cool, just interested if it was for anything in particular. Since starting my photography course I'm shooting a lot of subjects which I wouldn't expect, such as self portraits which I weren't keen on but know I want to experiment more with them :)
 
If you hold a P&S camera at arms length and look up into it then you have a perfect Myspace self portrait!
 
Bounce the flash if you use it indoors, off camera is even better.

The 50mm is great but wont allow you to have the camera to close.

Mark where you are going to stand and pre focus on an object there.

I tend to shoot around F2-2.8 most of the time.

The 18-70 could be useful for close up shots, I use a 17-50 for this, line it up with one of my eyes and check that I can see the centre AF point lighting up red when I focus so that I know I am locked onto my eyes.
Or being a canon user I can use eos utility and shoot tethered which makes it a whole lot easier.
 
Thanks very much Ian, will take those tips on board. Probably going to try some more tonight so will use those ideas and see how i get on.
 
I took these the other day, granted I have some studio lights to hand, but I just wanted to play with lighting coming very close to the face to get definition/shadow. You might be able to get that effect with your flash if you've wireless, and are creative with reflectors!

Low iso, High F stop, Fastest shutter. Idea being that you just use the light you produce and kill all ambient light with the F stop, but since you only have the one flash, you might have to use a lamp or something and lower the F slightly!
 
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