Shooting Self-Portraits

During my final year at university I have been photographing one of my friends as a model to represent my concept of fragmentation of the human form in a surreal sense. Although as I have been continuously researching other conceptual surreal photographers I was coming across some photographs that produced mainly surrealist self-portraits.

A photographer that I can across that caught my attention the most was Fares Micue, she is a self-taught fine art/conceptual self-portrait photographer. She uses her medium and her passion for writing to share her thoughts, ideas and perceptions of the reality with others by approaching her images in a creative way demonstrated through colour and props and creating a story to go alongside to bring the photo to life.

After researching and viewing Micue's photographs I was drawn towards how she combined objects such as flowers into her human form and how I could develop this into my own by instead of using bright contrasting colours, use subtle complimenting tones. Although I had considered how i could replicate this type of imagery and develop from the use of tonality, I had to consider what type of equipment I would need for the day of the shoot.

Luckily whilst being at university I have access to a variety of equipment such as cameras, lenses, lighting etc. I was also producing this shoot at home as if I want to experiment with more of a domesticated scene I had the opportunity to do so. For this shoot I used a Nikon D800, Prime FX Lens 50mm, LED Continuous lighting, tripod, Nikon release triggers and a white reflector. All the equipment I used may this shoot more easier to control as due to having continuous lighting I was then able to increase my aperture to dominate sharpness and decrease my ISO so less grain was visible. By using the prime lens because there is no zoom on the lens it allows everything to be sharper due to physically having to move the camera. From using the continuous lighting I can constantly see where the light is hitting and use the white reflector to bounce in natural and additional light. From using the tripod it allows the framing to be consistent throughout the entire shoot and last but not least release triggers, for anyone shooting digitally I 100% recommend anyone to use or buy release triggers, especially when shooting self-portraits as this saves so much more of you time in going to the camera, setting a timer and then going back into position.

From having this equipment available for me to use when producing and experimenting with self-portraiture, it made the whole experiment so enjoyable as I thought I wold be stressed due to being the photographer and also the model, I am so used to directing the model or allowing the model to go free with how they are representing themselves and capturing the moment instantly. Creating this shoot has definitely opened up my ideas to produce more self-portraits within my concept and other potential future concepts.

Harley Kelly.