Facepalm
A self portrait with a bit of a difference.
A self portrait with a bit of a difference.
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Apr, 2016Views
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ziggyzoo52
January 15, 2017
So very. Creative. & Original. I love it. Take a lot to beat this one. Congrats
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
I took this picture at home in my living room with my head pressed against a wall, camera on a tripod and set to take a series of imagesTime
I took the photo early in the evening after watching a video hosted by one of my favourite trick photographers Evan Sharboneau at www.PhotoExtremist.comLighting
For lighting, I used a single flash mounted on the camera and bounced off the ceilingEquipment
The equipment used to take this picture was quite limited, I just had A Nikon D300 with a Nikon 35mm f/1.8 lens and a Nikon SB600 flash all sitting on a Manfrotto 190 XPro tripod, I also had a Hähnel combi TF wireless trigger to be able to focus and start the sequence of images.Inspiration
It was after seeing some of Evan Sharboneau's work that I decided I wanted to try his self portrait style, so following his instructions, I created this version. His instructions were easy to follow, all I needed to do was make sure my head didn't move too much between the two shots used to create the effect. That was the main reason I chose to stand against a wall, trigger the camera to take a series of images, once it started, I held my hands to the side of my face so that my shoulders wouldn't move too much and alternated taking pictures without my hands, then with my hands, I also had a 5 second interval set so that I was in place with time to spare for each image.Editing
One I had all the images, I took them into lightroom and converted them all to black and white, at this point I selected what I thought would make the best twoo images and then did some sharpening and increased the contrast and clarity. Once I was happy, I imported them into photoshop as layers and went through the blending modes until I found one that worked best. After that, I used a mask to remove some distracting parts over the eyes, and spent some time on each eye enhancing them to make them stand out a bit. After that, I removed everything beyond the hands themselves to achieve this result. In preparation for the image, I had to go a few days without shaving, and also spent some time doing some gardening to give my hands and nails a more rugged look and feel, I also used some old engine oil just for good measure.In my camera bag
I used to carry everything with me on shoots, but these days I have learned to travel light and only take what I think I will need, so either my D800 or Sony A6000 with a single lens. If it is a night shoot, then I will bring a bag as well that will have a torch, a head torch, spare batteries for both the camera and torches, and a lens cloth. Depending what I am doing, I will probably have a tripod and a folding seat as well.Feedback
I would highly recommend Evan Sharboneau's (photoextremist) trick photography course if you want to recreate this image and many others. You don't need any special skills or even expensive software for many of his tutorials, and can do everything with some basic camera gear. You can do similar to this using a double exposure in camera, but it will never look quite so natural.
