Self Portrait

David, i like this one too. I am new to photography and still find myself terrifying at the carema lot of times (i am a very low-tech girl). It amazes me how you get this image (i assume it's you) so clear, it makes me feel like i can touch you.

I would like to know how you capture self-portrait so detailed like this. Please be adviced, thanks David. Warm regards,

tanya.

Thanks for your kind comments. They are always appreciated.

I understand your "fear" of high-tech gadgetry ... I'm a "low-tech" kind of person myself (as you've seen by my images of ShadowMan :))

For self-portraits such as this, the only real difficulty is framing the image. One could always shoot from further back and simply crop later, but that adds "grain" to any enlargements you may want to make. It's always better to do the crop in-camera, so that makes it all the more difficult to frame.

Pre-focusing using manual focus is simply a must, and using a mid-to-small aperture (say f/8 to f/22) is preferable if you don't have to worry about the background (as in this shot); it will give you a greater depth of field within the point of focus, giving you a larger room for error on where you place your body. Remember that if you use a wide aperture (say f2/8, or even f/4 to blur out the background), focusing and positioning of yourself in the image is *extremely* critical to obtaining a sharp image. You have to ensure that, after focusing the lens, you have to position yourself in the area within the aperture's rather small depth of field.

What I often do is position an object of the same height as the lens (anything will do, really) and pre-focus the lens on that. I mark the spot on the floor with a piece of tape. That's my focus point. I will often mark (if I can) where my body needs to "fit" within the frame I see through the lens (just a few small pieces of tape).

At that point, I set the camera to 'self-timer' (or use a long cable release if you have one) and position myself in the frame. When I move myself into position, I try to make sure that the point of my body I want in focus is in the same plane as the tape. Since one has perhaps 10 seconds to do this, I often practice moving into position several times BEFORE I take the image. Only then do I attempt to make the shot (this of course assumes you've got the position of your body the way you want and the lighting as well).

With film, the process is time-consuming and expensive. With digital, it's time-consuming but essentially free. You just shoot and check the results.

Of course, to make an image sharp starts with a great lens and proper focusing (and staying quite still if it's cold, for shots like this!). Using an inexpensive lens, particularly with digital sensors, simply will give less-than-pleasing results. On top of that, using proper sharpening techniques in post-processing will yield a final, sharp image.

I hope I haven't gone on too long with this, and I hope it helps. Thanks again, and good luck with your work. - David