Self Portraits

In these portraits, I wanted to express a darker side of myself. I thought that by being constricted to using black and white as a photographic medium, I could better portray this. I think that the portrait that emphasized light was the most difficult to do because the sun was moving and if you stayed in the same spot, you would lose the shot. I think what makes it creative is the use of shadows and lighting to create lines to define the shot. Another creative hurdle that I had was taking the prop picture inside of the classroom. It took me some effort to get the artificial lighting to look right indoors.

The only photos that I really set up specifically were the shots that I took indoors. Otherwise, the other photographs that I took outside were opportunity shots. My partner and I saw the opportunity to take a photo using the natural lighting that was present outside. Composition-wise, we tried to emphasize the lines and strong contrast in the photo. We were able to do this with the use of bright lighting and heavy shadows. However, I think that I could have improved the outdoor shots by possibly tinkering around with the ISO or shutterspeed. On my indoor photo, I think that I could have made it better by emphasizing the rule of thirds.

I think that most of my photos were decent. At first I had some concern about my photos having strong contrast. I thought about it, and I found out the strong contrast actually helped to add more meaning to the photo. I just thought that my pictures had too much noise. I attribute this to the super high ISO number. I think that by lowering the ISO in the next shot, I can reduce the noise in the photo.

I think my portraits were fairly decent. I think that I did a good job in capturing the natural lighting outside and using it to my advantage. If I were to do this project again, I would have chose a much better prop and tinkered with my ISO next time to reduce the noise. My favorite shot from the whole project was the shot that I took when I was laying on the grass. I thought it looked really cool because it incorporated both line and light in one shot. My least favorite shot from the project was the rule of thirds one. I thought it was too dark and the constrast was not emphasized enough. Other than that, I am pretty happy with the photos I took.