Self Portrait Photography

This post is written by Guest Contributor, Champ Ocampo. If you are also interested in writing a guest blog, please reach out using the form in the Contact page.

After doing few experiments, I can say that shooting self portrait is one of the most difficult categories in photography and fun shooting as well. Getting the right angle will be a difficult task to achieve. But gladly, with the aid of right equipment, self portrait is becoming easier and fun! Shooting oneself requires no boundaries, you can shoot all you want, pose in ways you want and dress up the way you want. It is just between you, your camera and your creativity. Let me share some of the tips and my experience for self portrait shooting.

The equipment I used and recommend

1. Tripod

2. External Flash

3. Flash Trigger and Receiver

4. Flash Stand and Hot Shoe holder

5. RF Remote Control

6. External Flash Soft Box (optional)

Self Portrait

This self portrait of mine was taken at our dining area after cooking our supper and waiting for my wife to come home from work. This shot was actually experimental. I thought of a “bright and dark side of Champ” concept. The black background was purely improvised. I used my wife’s shawl as my back drop. I mounted my DSLR on a tripod and placed it 2 meters away from me and mounted my external flash unit on a stand and place it closer in front of me about hip high. I also used an external flash soft box diffuser. Now after completing equipment setup, I moved to adjust camera settings. I find camera settings are very important when shooting with variation of lights. I used my kit lens (18-55mm f4.5-5.6) for a semi wide angle shot and used following camera settings.

My camera settings

1. Focal length – 35mm

2. Aperture – f/5.6

3. Shutter Speed – 1/200

4. ISO 200

5. WB – Kelvin 5000 (or Set into Flash icon)

6. Flash Power Level – 1/16

I have few recommendations when you are shooting in this kind of environment. Before shooting, try to turn on all the lights possible to check where you want to stand in front of the camera. If everything looks OK, set your camera shutter release mode into IR Remote timer. It is always convenient to use an IR Remote Control than setting up your camera into 10 second timer, press the shutter release button, run into your place immediately and adjust your desired position. There are lots of cheap IR Remote Controls out there, mine is JJC brand, and it costs around $5. Now if you are ready, turn off all the lights, go to your position, pose yourself, emote and press the remote to release camera shutter. Shoot as many as you want until your battery drains. I am sure you will have fun shooting self portrait. Happy Shooting!

An Experiment With Splash Photography

I got a request from one of the readers to write something about splash photography which I have never tried before. As soon as I got the request, I thought why not I try myself and share my experience with my readers. And today, I setup everything I can think of for splash photography and took several shots. Today's experiment gave me an idea of splash photography being more about precision, practice and patience. I shot five or six photos before splashing a cube of ice into a glass just to make sure that I have a good light condition. I have attached one of the photographs I took today. Let me explain what I did to get this shot. It is not a great shot but since it is my first time, I am happy with it.

Splash Photography

Equipment Setup

First I thought of putting three white cards around the glass to bounce the light. I tried that setup but it didn't give me a natural looking feeling. I wanted to do something natural and yet look exciting. Then I removed those cards and placed a glass on the table in a natural light environment and adjusted my exposure settings accordingly. I shot this picture in a Shutter priority mode because my main concern was to freeze the motion of water or liquid that will splash out when something is dropped into it. I tested different shutter speed and settled with 1/2500th of seconds. I used an external flash SB-600 to compensate the exposure with the high shutter speed. Keep in mind that you have to enable Auto FP feature in your DSLR camera to work with higher shutter speed than camera's sync speed. I used Nikon's wired shutter release cable and set my camera on a tripod to make it stable. I dropped a cube of ice myself and press the shutter release button with the other hand. Having two hands work together side by side confused me little bit for few shots. If possible, I recommend having an assistant to drop the ice on the water and you concentrate on getting a shot.

Taking a shot

When everything is setup, I dropped the ice from one hand and click the shutter button using other hand. I had already framed my shot and since everything is fixed, I don't have to see through the viewfinder to take my shot. That made my job little bit easy to synchronize the timing between dropping the ice on the glass and take a shot. I failed multiple times and finally got this shot which is something closer to what I like.

Summary

1. Setup your DSLR camera on a tripod.

2. I recommend shooting in a shutter priority mode and use the camera shutter speed fast enough to freeze the motion of splash. I used 1/2500th of sec.

3. Frame your photograph in advance and don’t bother to look through viewfinder while taking a shot.

4. Use wired or wireless shutter release button for a smooth operation.

5. Use White or gray card to balance the flash if you like and you may want to use one of the external flash unit to give enough light for handling faster shutter speed.

6. Count the dropping of your ice and click the button exactly when ice falls into ice. You may want to experiment little bit on timing to get a proper shot.

Like I already said, splash photography is more of practice, patience and precision between two actions. You will have to practice a lot to get a perfect shot. This is my first time and I didn't expect to get a great shot but what I got above is something to assure myself that I am going into the right direction.