Self Portrait Friday – Week IV
Today I was asking for ideas related to this week's SelfPortraitFriday, but the traffic was incredibly low on the subject and I got nothing back. After getting home from work the idea of not doing today's portrait lingered until late in the evening (European time), but in the end here it is:
It represents myself of course, as the glass wearing guy that I am and as you can see it also contains another thing representative for myself, the reflection of the monitor on my glasses. I spend way too much time in front of the monitor.
Equipment used:
- Canon EOS 1000D
- Canon 18-55mm F/3.5-5.6 kit lens
- UV Filter on the lens
- TFT Monitor as main light source from front left (left of the glasses)
- TV as second light source masked by a tall leather chair from behind so only a little bit of light got on teh glasses through reflection (needed more tries due to commercials on TV and bad single hand camera holding shake)
- Processed with Digital Photo Professional and Gimp.
If you find it a bit interesting please share it and leave a comment. Thanks.
Self Portrait Friday – Week Three
Sorry I could not post this on Friday, but I had to think about the way I wanted to take the shot very quickly, take the shot, load it on the computer, convert from RAW to JPG and upload it on Flickr. Than log into my Twitter account, post a quick #selfportraitfriday linky link and get the heck out of the house.
Traffic wise it would have been better if I had done this post on Friday and twitter it, but I'm ok with it as it is. The photograph I took on Friday was meant to be and I'll explain why after you take a look at the the image:
See me with the map behind, that is because I love to travel. Of course the photo is far from perfect or not close to good. No flash, no light source other than the window light, my face is dark.. but it was predestined to be taken and that is because of what happened next.
I mentioned earlier that I was in hurry and took the photograph quickly and got out of the house. That was because I was supposed to meet a few friends, one of which was coming by train all the way to Stuttgart, to have a beer with us and enjoy the weekend. Needless to say that we met and had a beer. We talked and talked and started thinking what are we going to do on Saturday and Sunday, should we go some place and which place is that ?
Vienna, also known as Wien, yep we decided to go to Austria's capital which is no less than 670km away and about 7-8 hours drive time. If we left early in the morning we would get there late in the afternoon, lose time to find a place to sleep and not have much time for the city. We decided to go home, pack our stuff, maybe have a coffee or lay down half an hour to relax a bit and than hit the road. I call the wife and tell her we're driving to Austria in about three hours.
02:03 AM I pick up my friends from one of the friends apartment flats parking lot. Drive from Stuttgart towards Heilbron, than Nürnberg, than Passau and into Austria. Stop at the border and buy the 10 day (minimum period) "vignette", which is an austrian road tax ticket, loosen up a bit, walk a few steps, have some water, a croissant and of course a dump. (when you need to go you need to go) hit the road again, everyone in the car is sleeping, except me driving, my eyes start acting weird, I'm like in some anime going through some weird space time field and my soul can see me from above. Something goes into full throttle inside of me and keeps saying "pull over, get some sleep! pull over!". I know that voice and I trust that voice, it's my self preservation instinct, the "myself" that makes sure I do not do stupid things and die.
So I pulled over in a gas station, just a little bit more to go to reach Vienna..
(I'll continue this in a Vienna trip dedicated post so make sure you come back for the whole story. Thank you for reading.)
As promised here it is: beer crazy made Vienna trip.
Self Portrait Friday – Week Two
Today is another Friday and that means it is the tiem for my second attempt at #selfportraitfriday. I decided to go for something inspired by the self portrait of last week but do not keep it the same, same is boring and I don't want that.
First let me show the self portrait photo I took last Friday: 
It got quite some traffic on Flickr and even won a competition so that makes me satisfied, for a first attempt. The ears are good, the focus is acceptable, teh colors are ok and the nose.. well who needs a big nose anyway ?
Second I have to show the results of todays #selfportraitfriday efforts, not really effort though, more like fun. Let me refrase that: 'I'll show you the result of todays selfportraitfriday theme fun (activity)'.
Weird ? I decided to take more shots to see which one I liked best. In the end there was none that I liked so I took the decision to play with post processing a little bit more and experiment with one thing or the other. In the end I ended up depth merging two images, maybe inspired by memories of old film times when this sort of image could happen by accident.
Thanks for reading and hope to read your comments. Have a good weekend.