Halos

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 ;)).

Shoot: The Seers - Tenna/Selfportraits

The new issue of Starlight Magazine went up this week and as always I have been busy finishing photos and articles for the magazine. I did three shoots for this issue. I took a couple of selfportraits and then Tenna and I had a shoot a couple of weeks ago. Since the theme was Halloween, we went all out with occult stuff, hehe. We planned for it to be four photos with different kinds of divination that would complement each other. I ended up titling it "The Seers". It was really interesting doing not only different shoots, but also different setups and still have it be in the same series.

The Seers



Model: Tenna





Selfportrait




Selfportrait



Model: Tenna

 Bonus pic:

Selfportrait

 The photos with the ouija board and the crystal ball are shot using my new beauty dish, and I have to say that I really like how different the light is compared to the soft box. I'm really looking forward experimenting more with that one, even though I actually had to do this shoot (with the crystal ball) twice, because I wasn't satisfied with the first outcome - but that mostly have to do with my being really awful at posing and my face, noting works, lol.

The tarot cards and the runes I already had lying around and then I found this neat crystal ball. But Tenna whipped up the ouija board out of practically nothing. She's awesome like that :D

Don't forget to check out the new issue of Starlight Magazine and stay tuned for the photos from my Snow White shoot. :3

Selfportrait: Sleeping Beauty for Starlight Magazine

The Sleeping Beauty selfportraits I did for Starlight Magazine.

This shoot was really difficult in terms of the getting the right angles and also I was trying out a new way of 'tethering' which turned out to extremely unreliable. So yeah, not the smoothest shoot I 've done.

Dress by Innocent World.

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.

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.

Post practice - BW

I've grown so tired of selfportraits. The learning curve is so much steeper when you have to run back and forth. I can't wait to shoot with models. But I did learn the immense difference between pics taken when overcast vs. direct sunlight. Lesson learned, yes.

Right now, practicing postprocessing skills and hoping for dry weather tomorrow. It's pouring down now.

Flash Study #1

I bought my first external flash (Nikon SB-600) a few weeks ago and I have been dying to learn how to use it. I've done a couple of practice shoots and I feel kind of proud of what I have achieved, mostly because I didn't expect this kind of result so fast.



This is done in our dining room. There's a window on the the left (yours) and a reflector infront of me. The flash was shot at the ceiling at a 90 degree angle - with a diffusor cap on. I really like that soft light.
Though, there are still some kinks to work out. The shadow below the chin is a bit distracting (or maybe it wasn't - until I pointed it out).

And for comparison; the unedited, uncropped, but downsized version:


(I look tiiiiiired).

I am looking forward to getting more experience using the flash, and I suspect it will be easier to work with when I get someone to model for me.

On another note, I am in love with the reflector (which is something I have also just started using). Just love it, man.