A 52 week photography project? Okay, the idea is not brand new, but still a great way to improve one’s approach towards photography (at least I hope so). That’s why I’ve decided to start my own little 52 week project, which means that I am going to take one picture per week and post it on this blog. I thought about different things that I could take pictures of, like a street from different angles, the changing of the seasons at a specific location and so on. But my laziness compelled me to choose another subject. ME! Not that I am an overly narcissistic person, but the advantage of taking pictures of me is that I am always available when I get in the mood for taking pictures. In addition, I get to train my poorly developed portrait skills.
So here is what I am going to do:
Each week, I will post a new portrait of me that I shot during that week. I will experiment with clothes, lighting, locations and settings, to get a better understanding of how those things work and interact with each other (especially lighting). I will also elaborate on how I took the shot.
I will be more than glad to receive tips and suggestions on how to improve my pictures, as the goal of this 52 week project is to enhance my photography skills. So feel free to comment my pictures with positive and negative (but constructive) criticism.
This is my first portrait (yeah, I should have cleaned my glasses ):
The setup for this shot was rather minimalistic. Only recently have I discovered, that I can trigger my external flash unit with my built-in camera flash. So I put my external unit on a tripod and lit my face slightly from the side. To achieve the black backdrop, I used the fastest possible shutter speed that my external flash would sync to (1/250sec), low ISO-settings (ISO 100) and a small aperture (f/20). This creates a nice black backdrop without having to buy a black carpet or anything like that.
What do you think?
