Self- Portraits

I wanted to express visually about myself, who I am and what I am about. For this it project it was a little difficult to come up with ideas. I had a little help from my photographer, my mother; I don’t want to leave her out for helping. But, when my photographer and I went out to take photographs we went with the flow with some ideas, just to try out and see. I believe the most creative photograph was the one where I am sitting in the Starbucks looking out the window with lighting hitting my face. I think what makes it creative is that I am holding my Starbucks drink and I am looking out the window with a small smile on my face. The difficult part was trying ignore the people in the background which are my friends and when I went to Starbucks I didn’t know they were there. Creativity plays a great role in all the self- portraits with the beauty of the lightning, how my expression turned out on my face, to my pose/position I was in, and to how the photos were set up. All of these things helped give it the creative feel.

At Starbucks I was the emphasis making the people in the background blurry. I loved the lighting on this photograph, I liked how the sun’s light hit my face and gave it a wonderful moment. For the swing, I brought what was meaningful to me, a sharpened pencil and paper, giving myself the main focus of the photo, not being placed in the middle, my photographer tried different angles and I liked how they came out. I went with the flow just coming up with ideas randomly. I had to crop the element photo, which is line to not have me in the center of the picture, after I cropped, it turned out better, and there was no light shining on myself, the sun was still up and since I wasn’t facing the camera or turned half way light did not shine on me. For the rule of thirds, the sun was still up and the ones I had sitting in the grass I was squinting my eyes and in this photo I have them slightly open. Compositionally, the light shined on my body, giving a shadow in the back of me, the space gives it great composition for this photo, and I am towards the right side not in the middle and not facing the camera.

For craftsmanship, some of the photos that were taken came out to bright and some to dark but I did not to choose those photos. No, I didn’t use any of the techniques that we learned to fix lighting because of the lack of understanding of how to use some of those techniques and not sure or I don’t remember how to use those techniques. The sun was still up and bright enough for the photographs, and for a while my photographer and I waited for the sun to go down to get some more pictures and to see if they would turn out better. The strengths were how I became the main focus and how the lighting looked either if it was in my eyes, or not visible, or very artistic. What I would have changed was for my light photo I would have asked the people in the background to move just for a few minutes, and for the line photo I should have moved away from the trees so then I wouldn’t be place in the center of the photo.

My overall opinion of my portraits is that they came out really great and I love the ones I picked. What I think I did well is how I positioned in each photograph. What I would do differently if I had this same assignment again I would go to different places such as a park, change my face expressions, maybe change my setting for the meaningful prop, change my clothes, and maybe some other things. My favorite shot of all was the lighting photo at Starbucks; I would not change this photo. My least favorite photo was line because of the tree being in the way and having to crop it in Photoshop. In conclusion, this project was a little difficult to come up with ideas for but having a little help I got through it. Overall this project came out to be fun.