Self-Portrait Rules

The number one rule in self-portraits is this: unless you are a female with skin like that of a 6 month-old baby, and have a lean mean machine of a body, and the facial structure of a Greek Goddess, you're probably going to be disappointed. That's not to say you won't be able to take a decent shot of yourself, but the reality of a 10 plus megapixel capture on a computer monitor is that anything less than baby smooth skin, lean mean bod, and Greek Goddess looks will have you reduced to tears before you've even begun to attempt using the healing brush and cloning tool in Photoshop. In my case, because I didn't have a model and wanted to try out some new lighting set-ups today, the use of myself behind and in front the camera showed me that there aren't enough tools in the entire Photoshop suite to turn a sow's ear into anything other than another sow's ear. Ain't no silk purse coming out of my face. I do, however, have some pointers for those of you possibly suffering from a similar genetic train wreck.


First, it helps to wear a hat of some kind. In my case, it covers acres of bare skin running from my eyebrows to my back that have marks and blemishes that appear to need immediate medical attention. Dirty baseball caps are good...they tend to give one a friendly and personable look. Note: the cap should be worn in the traditional manner with the bill in the front. Wearing it to cocked the side like someone just slapped you doesn't project the friendly and personable look you need. Trust me on that.



Second, a funky, stylish, or classy hat in place of a baseball cap could work. Not necessarily to make you look like any of the above, but more to give you an air of je ne sais quoi. (French for "Check out this cool hat!") A black and white conversion here can also work wonders, softening the skin somewhat, and that red, splotchy complexion literally disappears.

If, like me, hats don't even begin to mask an essential failure of nature to be the least bit kind to you, and frown lines and wrinkles on your face look more like furrows in a farmers field just before the fall planting, a hood is a good choice. This pretty much gets you out of the friendly and personable arena, so evil, deranged, and border-line psychotic is the look you're going for here. This also has a tendency to look-although it might be a stretch-artistic.

Artistic is good. Artistic could make some people think you're celebrating and acknowledging your faults...embracing them, magnifying them in a courageous way that they wish they could do instead of having all their portraits air brushed to perfection. Which you'll probably seriously consider in the future after a self-portrait session, because there aren't nearly enough of those kind of people in the world.

You've Been Mooned

Was out a little while ago and the moon was looking mighty big and bright (it will be a full one tomorrow) and just begging to be photographed. I'm not sure exactly what happens in the brain when we see the moon like that and become...well...Moonstruck.


The moon has that air of mystery about it...seemingly so close, yet unreachable except to a very select few. When I first saw it tonight, it was low on the horizon and looked totally doable as a drive you might want to take. You could look at it and figure if you started out early enough and with a minimum of pit stops, a few cans of Red Bull, and a couple of those double packs of Milky Ways and Three Musketeers, you'd be in one of those craters by 8 or 9 that evening. (exif info: 1/60 @f/11.0; ISO 200; 300mm (480 with 1.6 conversion)taken 1/1/07)



Anyway, my point is the moon is a popular subject for anyone with a camera, yet it's not that easy to get a good capture. There are a lot of factors that go into that, and also a good number of preferred settings and suggestions about taking a proper moon shot. I was prepared to give you a major breakdown on some of the most popular of these until I realized a few things: one, you're probably smart enough to Google up about a thousand answers to a "Moon Photos" search that would give you more accurate information than me; and two, after looking at the EXIF data on two of the shots included here, it's possible I might not be all that aware of the proper settings or methods and was just lucky.

What I will do is direct you to a Flickr discussion here that has a lot of cool moon pictures, a lot of funny comment, and probably tells you more than I or a thousand Google pages ever could. You're welcome. (exif info: 1/125 @ f/5.6; ISO 100; 300mm (480 with 1.6 conversion)taken 5/20/05)



By the way...you'll notice the two solo moon shots here were taken in '05 and '07, not tonight. That's because it's too cold and windy for my delicate and finely tuned body to cope with. Moon shots are definitely easier in warm weather locations.

Roller Derby Delight

I've been shooting the lovely ladies of Lancaster County 's(PA)Dutchland Rollers for about a year and a half now, and it has been a blast. Derby today is all female flat track roller derby action, and while some parts of it may be recognizable to old geezers like me who remember seeing it on black and white TV in the 50's, this is the real deal. No fake fights (or real ones), no hair pulling, no scripted winners and losers, no looking like wrestling on roller skates. These ladies are college students, wives, mothers, and are all business when it comes to competition and skating. If you've heard of a league in your area and haven't been to a bout yet, you owe it to yourself to pack your gear and give it a try.



Fair warning...derby action is not that easy to capture. Derby rinks have a tendency to be poorly lit, have very high ceilings that make bouncing flash all but impossible without adapters, and the action on a short flat track is fast! If you're close to the action (and in most of the rinks I've seen you will be), a built in flash or speedlight will work to a degree, but unless you have a set up with multiple strobes around the track, you may not be entirely happy with the results. In my experience, while the flash does indeed "freeze" the action, backgrounds appear under exposed and flat, and frankly, I'm just not crazy about the look you get.



I shoot with a Canon 40D and my 85mm f/1.8 lens almost all the time, rarely try flash, and can usually get a fair amount of "keepers" if I concentrate on what I'm doing and not get caught up in the action. Shooting without flash in low light generally requires a fast lens and high ISO's, something today's digital SLR's can easily handle. With the 40D/85mm f1.8 combination I can set the ISO at 1250 and get decent shots at 2.0 and 2.5. A spinoff of the high ISO speed is the appearance of "noise" in the photo. Again, with today's cameras, especially recent Canon and Nikon models, the noise levels are quite acceptable even at those high ISO's. Of course, a good noise reduction program should be a must tool in everyone's Photoshop basket of goodies, and the one I use and recommend is a product from Imagenomic called Noiseware. It does a great job, they have a free trial version, and for about $50 US for the standard version and $70 US for the Pro edition, it's a decent buy.



Another important consideration is the focus mode of your camera. The 40D has a AI Servo mode that sets exposure with a partially depressed shutter button, but monitors the frame and refocuses if camera or subject is moved...a nice feature.



There are many other factors and camera settings to consider, in addition to where you're standing in relation to the action. Is it coning at you? Going left to right in front of you? Coming off a turn? The best advice I can give is to bring along plenty of memory cards and experiment with different settings and shooting positions. Check out the Dutchland Rollers if you're in the neighborhood, or check out their Flickr pages to see what you might be missing.

Abstract Thoughts And "Spwanggg" Noises

I'm having problems thinking straight today, and while there may be a chorus of "Just today?" wafting through the air, I do feel a little off and out of whatever sorts normally dictate my life. Abstract thoughts and abstract photos will then serve as a theme for this entry.



My strong suspicion for the current condition of my being, would be an affirmation of my wife's nearly daily mantra: "We need a new bed." Her reasoning is pretty sound...old lumpy mattress and box spring, restless and uncomfortable nights, mornings of aches, pains, and rampant grumpiness. Usually I'll just mutter "Umm...yeah...new bed", because seriously, I've experienced morning aches, pains, and rampant grumpiness for most of my waking life and I'd expect that to remain even waking up on a brand new Serta. I'm not a morning person. My bones don't like mornings. My wake/sleep cycle tells me to go to bed at about 2:30-3:30 in the morning and get up-not necessarily happy and unrampantly grumpy-about six or seven hours later.



Last night, however, my computer and Photoshop froze up one too many times so I decided that was a sign to go to bed early (11:30pm) and look forward to a fresh start in the morning. That'll teach me put any faith in abstract signs like that. My biggest problem wasn't so much that I couldn't fall asleep, it was what was keeping me up...Spring sounds. Not the birdies chirping, kids laughing, power mowers droning spring sounds, but the mattress spring variety.



Just about ever time I moved more than an inch, there was a following "boing," spwanggg," or "nunnggn" sound, usually accompanied by a none-too-gentle poke from the "boing," spwanggg," or "nunnggn" area. If that wasn't a recipe for being awake most of the night and rampant morning grumpiness I don't know what is. Obviously, a new mattress/box spring is the order of the day. I know I'm still a bit groggy and out of sorts, but they're only about $100 for the pair...right?

Ants In My Pants

Mid-March in the Eastern United States brings both tantalizing hints of spring, and reminders that we're foolish if we think it actually is spring. The weather can change in a matter of minutes from glorious to God-awful, from hopeful to hopeless, and from balmy to "blow off the roof shingles" brutal. I don't deal well with winter, and this tantalizing hints thing isn't making me a ball of good cheer either. I want nothing lower than 60 degrees, and it would be nice if it capped off at about 80. Maybe 81. 82 tops. And I want this most of the year. I'll allow maybe a month of winter temperatures and a few days of snow around Christmas time, but that's it.




Winter is gray, while spring is a riot of color just begging to be photographed. Spring is car shows on city streets, office workers eating lunch in the park, and no overcoats, gloves, scarves, or clunky boots. I'm getting tired of lugging around my Tamrac backpack and not cracking it open because it's too cold or windy or rainy or gray.



I'm getting very, very, very antsy. Who do I have to talk to to get this spring thing firmly in place? I've got pictures to take. (Full Disclosure:None of the accompanying photos were taken in the winter.)

The World In Black & White

I love the look and "feel" of black and white photography. That's not to say I don't care for color...in fact much of my color processing involves pushing the colors way beyond what they actually were. I really like seeing that pop of brightness that practically makes your eyes water, and yet black and white is still my favorite form of the art of photography. The drama and mystery that is contained in a well done b/w conversion simply outdoes anything you could come up with in a color version. Still, not everything I shot is converted to black and white. That's a creative and artistic decision made somewhere during initial processing, but there are shots that I know as soon as I put my eye to the viewfinder that I want to see in black and white.



The actual conversion to b/w is a whole world unto itself, with an enormous amount of methods available both in Photoshop and other image editors, and third party plug-ins and stand alones. To begin, I'm a firm believer in taking all your shots in color, even though many digital cameras today have settings that allow taking it in b/w or a sepia tone. You're just limiting your creative possibilities by doing that. Shoot color, convert to black and white, and you still have the option to go back to color if the conversion isn't floating your boat. I've experimented with a lot of different conversion methods, read a million tutorials, played with numerous actions developed for Photoshop b/w conversions, and still don't stick to strictly one. One that I do use a lot though, is a freebie from Photo-Plugins. It has a easy interface, a lot of tweakability, and it's free...check it out.



Another site that also offers free downloads and a great assortment of b/w conversion tools is The Light's Right Studio. Their b/w and toning actions and presets are some of the best I've seen...well worth a look. As long as we're talking about freebies...another plugin that offers a lot of great looks is one that has been around for a while, but still has a lot going for it. It's Virtual Photographer from OpticVerve Labs. Color presets, b/w presets, toning presets and more. Again, a product with massive amounts of tweakability, cool looks, and best of all...free.



There's a lot to be said for the newest edition of Photoshop (CS3) and it's b/w converter. It's intuitive, and I like the ability to simply put your cursor on a portion of the photo you want to tweak and simply move it left or right to lighten or darken. (There's bit more than that to doing a proper conversion, but it's a cool feature!)




And don't forget the built-in Adobe Raw Converter packaged with Photoshop CS3. It has a pretty good set of b/w conversion tools and since it's a Raw conversion, it's non-destructive. (You are shooting RAW...right?)