Okay so this year I decided to challenge myself more. In a way that is tangible and realistic to achieve. So I came upon a project; it takes 52 weeks and every week I have to take one self portrait. Sounds easy enough right? Well, so far I have already failed in the planning/doing part of it, but I have taken 4 photos this month and will share the photos, and some ideas behind them.

Week 1: New toys from christmas

Okay, so for christmas I got this amazing new toy. It is an aputure MC and it gives colored light. I decided to immediately start using it any chance I got. As you might have seen in the floating objects vlog. But for this self portrait, I wanted to use it to create a color contrast. So I used it as a warm color from one side and a cold color from the other side. That failed. I could not keep the light up and pose as I wanted to, so I decided to use photoshop magic to fix my problems. I took two photos of the wall in front of which I was posing and used the light to illuminate it twice.

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After I had taken those photos, I would pose as I wanted and use the light to light my face. I was shooting after sundown, so that is why I needed it. Then after I did my magic in photoshop, this was the result.

I also changed it to black and white, which was totally the opposite of the initial idea, but during the editing process it felt fitting.

I am pretty happy with the result and the process of taking and editing the photo felt great.

Week 2: Planning is hard

So….. Yeaahh… This is when I failed already. I meant to take a photo, but the vlog production took way longer than I anticipated and the self portrait became too little a priority. Even though I had come up with an idea, I did not execute it. It felt quite bad and in the third week I did execute the idea that I came up with. The concept is quite personal and therefore I will not share that, but I will share the photo in which it resulted and part of the technical process of it.

For this photo I took a photo of myself standing on a stool in my room and using the wall behind me for stability. Then I used Unsplash to find stock photos that would help to bring my idea to life. First I needed a rock formation in water. I found that, but the water near it was not entirely to my liking, so I went and found a better photo of a stormy sea. I added the splashes using brushes in photoshop to make it more realistic. Then I found a night sky which I liked. I added the ship later on mostly for fun. The fog is my way of hiding my amateurish blending skills and it adds mystery.

One of the most important things in photoshop is to match the colors of your different images and that is what I focused on.

The main conclusion I had drawn from this week is that it is important to make time for the little things as well. They make the achievement of bigger goals more meaningful. Because even though I did finish the vlog, I felt bad that I did not also take the self portrait.

Week 3: Trying to get my face to do new things

My default photo face when others take my photo is to subtly smile or to just smile in general. If I try to get my face to do other things I normally hate it. I think that is mainly because I am not used to seeing those expressions. For this week I tried to get over that and just take the photos of my weird face doing new things and I kind of liked the results. I did not have a thought out concept, but just went and took the photos. I liked a lot of the resulting photos, but chose two for the project.

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So again, just doing this makes me feel a lot better about myself. This challenge is one of the more tangible goals I set for this year and it feels great to feel a sense of accomplishment. 🙂

Week 4: Inspired by the Winx series

This week I started watching the new live action Winx series that is on Netflix. I used to love the old animation series and like the live action one as well so far. Either way, I made a self portrait inspired by the magic element of the series and this is the result.

I took two photos of myself. One with me holding the light as if it was the fire so my face would be lit as it would be if there was actual fire. And a second one that lights my hand as the fire would realisitically. After I insterted my hand that was lighted properly to the other photo, I went to Unsplash to find new photos to use. I first found a flame photo. I put that in, but as my boyfriend then pointed out, it was too sharp. So then I blurred it a lot so it would better match the rest of the image. Once that was done, I added some sparks to fill up the frame because it looks awesome.

The first month of this challenge was not without its challenges. I feel like I learned a lot and improved my skills because of the challenge.

Let me know what you think of the results!