Selfportrait: On Black Wings

"When the shadows remain
in the light of day
On the wings of darkness
He'll retaliate
He'll be falling from grace
'Til the end of all his days"

- A Demon's Fate by Within Temptation

Finally, I've had time and, more importantly, inspiration to take some photos again. I've been on a break in regards to my photography, but no more, sir, I say. For now you'll have to look at my face, but fear not for I have set up a few shoots with models as well, but yeah, I need to hone my skills. Or something. Okay.

Oh, and just a quick note, for those who haven't already noticed: I used to post my photos on my second blog, but I recently merged it with this one and from now everything will be posted here.

And yes, that's a new watermark and it's not pretty, but needed, apparently. Some people can't tell mine from theirs. Ugh.

Shoots: Selfportraits - Harry Potter (for Starlight Magazine)

The newest issue of Starlight Magazine is out and the theme was to show off the nerdy sides that many Lolitas have. I did a feature on my interest in Harry Potter. Check out the magazine here.

Selfportrait: Curiosities

Passing a Sunday afternoon by doing a selfportrait I've been wanting to do for a couple of weeks, but have had to put off, because of work and and a stupid corneal abrasion. 

To those of you who don't know, I'm a big Harry Potter fan and that's a movie replica of Prof. Snape's wand in my hand. The fairy dust was one of my Christmas gifts from Tenna. 

This second version was actually the first edit, before I decided to change it up a bit. I've been editing my photos in the same routine for a really long time and felt like mixing it up a bit, hence the first ones being all colour explosion ;)

I acutally hate doing selfportraits most of the time. Obviously, it's a lot more difficult getting the right shot, when you're not seeing what you're shooting when you're shooting it. It helps with the camera being tethered to the computer, but it's still tricky to get everything right. Alas, they are necessary to test light setups and new ideas. So while I'm not a big fan of them, one of my goals this year is to try to do more selfportraits, so I can get some practice, because on the plus side, they require much less planning than a model shoot (but I still want to do more of those as well, hehe, so altogether, more shoots need to happen ;)).

Selfportrait: Feels Like Alice

 

So I bought this wig on ebay for like super cheap mainly for lolita photoshoots. I just received it and I thought I'd test it out. But it's so weird to see myself in these photos, it doesn't even look like me, haha, but it was fun to be blonde for an evening :D

The last three ones I was testing out and playing around with backlight - I love it, even though it is so hard to control. 

Recent selfportraits

        

         

So these are some of the shoots I've been doing in the last week. Yeah it's some silly stuff: Antlers, veil, artificial ivy garlands, crazy makeup and I had a string of fairy lights too in one of them, but that looked too ridiculous, haha ;D

And I put up both the colour and the b/w versions of the last two images. I couldn't decide, hehe.

But it's been really nice, these past two weeks, to have some time off work to relax and practice with different light setups. I took some photos this evening too in which I wore my new wig, but I'll post those tomorrow.

Shoot: Lone - Black background

I recently bought a softbox for my speedlight and some black velvet, then I invited Fair Lone over and here's the result:

Oh, I bought a cable for my speedlight as well, which I'm so thrilled about - Finally I can get my flash off my camera. :D

In other news, I'm doing a shoot for the next issue of the new online magazine 'Starlight Magazine' made by Danish Lolitas for Danish Lolitas. The theme for the next issue is fairy tales. I'm really looking forward to doing this, because I'm practically itching to do more photoshoots with Lolitas and also, 'fairy tales' is the best theme ever :3

Selfportrait: Dark Swan

So obviously I saw Black Swan last week. I liked it, especially when Nina became the Black Swan. So I thought I'd do some selfportraits inspired by the movie. It's been so long since I've gone that crazy with make up, so that was fun. I was sure I was going to end up with permanently blackened eyebrows, haha, but after much scrubbing it came off again.
I had a light setup planned in my head, but it didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it, because with my camera doesn't allow for wireless connection with my flash. I think the next photography purchase I'm going to save up for is a SB-900 flash so I can use it as master to set off my SB-600. I still like the result though.

The black background is actually just open space. I shot these at night using my flash, a reflector screen and one of our living room lamps.

I also took some photos for my Lolita fashion blog yesterday. I went to the park, because for once in a really long time the sun actually shone on one of my days off and I'm a sucker for backlight.

Shoot: Lone 2

Last weekend Lone and I did another shoot together - this time inside at my place. We shot for about an hour and a half, doing three wardrobe changes (you only get to see two though).

All right, I'll just show you the pics:

I don't want to get carried away or anything, but I'm so happy about these pics - I think they turned out really great, which only makes me want to push harder to improve and that is a feeling I've missed.

Right now I'm thinking about solutions to my background problems. These pics were shot infront of a white wall, which works fine, except there are two lamps on the wall that I have to edit out, not that it takes that long to do, but I'd like to work something out, so I can use different colours for backgrounds. I really want to try working with a black background.

I could invest in a whole set up with a frame and a seamless paper set up, but I think that's a bit too expensive and would rather do this as a last resort.

Then Walimex makes these foldable backgrounds that are kind of handy, but then I'd have to choose just one colour, because buying more would just add up to the same amount as a whole setup.

I was kind of thinking about some kind of creative solution with some fabric and some kind of... I don't know. I'll have to think about this some more.

I downloaded the trial version of Apple's Aperture 2.0 in order to try and tether my camera and computer. It took a while to get it to work as I had to figure out the settings for my camera and also that you actually have to put a memory card in the camera for it to work, despite the fact that the pictures will be stored on the computer.

But it worked and it was kind of awesome, haha. Seriously, though, it was a big help to be able to view the picture right away on the computer in terms of exposure and focus. I think it also helped Lone, because we put the screen so she could watch too while we were shooting. It's nice to know what you look like and whether or not one's poses work. Definitely, something I will be using again. Actually, I can't wait to use it again.

Another thing I learned was that while some don't seem to consider the 50mm f/1.4 lens the ideal lens for studio photography, I quite liked how it allowed me to turn down the flash a bit which not only saves the batteries, but also I liked how the reflection of the flash in Lone's eyes was more understated than it would have been had I not been able to use such a low f-stop.

That's all for now.

Ps. How much do you love the curls on Lone? Hot damn :D