As part of my ongoing quest to take a decent/recent/sexay picture of myself, I decided to engage in a few experiments. First was to play with different lighting sources. It worked well when I took his photos (all his pics in that profile were taken by me, though he didn’t use any of my favorites (more clothed) from that photo shoot). I also decided to play with a jawline beard again like the ones knight_errant and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine pull off so well. And finally, I decided to try to spike my hair a bit with pomade (not answering my cell phone, using hair product, next thing you know, I’ll be wearing gap clothes and enrolling in a PhD EECS program 😉 So, I put on my second tightest shirt and went for it.
I don’t think the hair goo made a noticeable impact. The beard is subtle at present, but since I’m not bringing my trimmer with me, will probably be less so by the time I leave DC.
The lighting was kind of interesting. I wanted to use natural light (a rare commodity at this latitude and time of year), and be looking out the window for a symbolic sort of thing, plus the winterscape prettiness. Unfortunately, that blew the lighting all to hell and back. I managed the visual effect I was going for by careful use of the blinds so that some light shone on me, but very little made it to the camera lens directly from the window. That was better, but in terms of quality of initial exposure, the most important factor seemed to be how much of the window made it into the shot. The more of the window in the shot, the darker the rest of the photo. The indirect lighting from our recently purchased torch lamps helped. The spot light provided by my new clip on lamp was ambiguous, becaus it was damn hard to aim.
The complete listing of pics can be found at http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/~scu/pics/people/scu/MN/Dupont/lighting/ for the pic#.#.jpg, the first number is the photo, the second number represents digital color remappings, to adjust for varying brightness levels.
As an example of what intensity modification can do for a photo:
and
I like them for the interesting color patterns it makes on the wall behind me. It gives it sort of a painting-esque effect. This also illustrates just how little difference the interior lighting for the room made with the window dead center in the pic. Can you guess which set had it, and which did not?
Keeping my head up (instead of leaning it against the window sill) helped, rather alot, imho, though obviously not with the lighting.
Then there’s the effect of aiming your spotlight on the right spot:
Me bundled up for the cold outside:
Brian commented on my photographic endeavors, so I gave him the camera, so he could take a random shot of me sitting at the computer:
my favorites.
It would probably also be a good idea for me to work on the body language in these pics, but I’m really not sure what I want to convey. =)
It’s a dark house. 😀
The lighting in the last one is good, but my first impression is still “why is he looking at the window with the blinds down?”
Great pics. is right, it *is* a dark house… but sometimes dark pictures give an air of mystery. 🙂
I think they look pretty great actually… 🙂 I would love to see what they look like in b/w…
b&w
easy enough (if I don’t screw up the html tags, that is):
Re: b&w
I like them… 🙂 Thanks!
BTW… do you compress the photos?
Re: b&w
There were enough photos that I did a simple two step process: rotate 90 degrees, then scale back both dimensions by half. Color adjustment happened with a few, but that’s it.
Much simpler, I’m beginning to think, to arrange the light well in the first place than to spend half an hour in photoshop (or gimp, in my case) adjusting the intensity scale. =)
it’s the second set that has no internal light, right?
that’s also the set that looks slightly better (because of it 😉
though i think the less-looking-up poses of later pics works better.
are these vanity shots, or for a practical purpose?
You’re right, actually. I had difficulty seeing any difference on my monitor.
Mostly to keep my pics up to date. And because I’ve received requests from my adoring public. =)
did you notice the shadows? 😉
Heh. They do sorta give it away, don’t they? No, I hadn’t noticed until you pointed it out =)
Those are some good shots, but like you said, including the window in the frame gave the camera some issues. Were you using a webcam or a digital camera with a flash? If you have a flash, I would try repeating the same setup only with the camera flash forced on. If it’s far enough away (but not too far!), it will light up your face, without overpowering the effect of the light from the window.
Or, you might want to see if you can try an angle that’s more parallel to the wall. That would allow you to use the natural light from the window, the angle would be of the side of your face that’s not so much in shadow, and you could still include part of the window in the frame to get the wistful look.
Digital camera. I tried using the flash with it on many occasions, but I came to the conclusion that the flash was too bright, because used at a range suitable for the type of shots I mostly use the camera for (that is, people pics) it dominates all other light sources short of direct mid day sun, and produces very pronounced shadows which add an odd effect to edges with a flat background.
Argh. I’d try going with the shallower-angle approach. If you can get a friend (or an inanimate stand-in), then you could try several different setups rather quickly and see what works best.