Self portrait project

[Sloley]

I walk, I live in an English Landscape, I write Haiku, I have a TtV contraption. I'm 65, Oct 1st was Older Persons Day. I admire self portraitists, from Annie Brigman to the Flickr groups. I decided to make self portraits in the landscape for an ongoing project.

This is the first picture I made for my Figure in the Landscape project;



And this is the Haiku to go with it;

Old quarried forgotten pathway
Smothered by overgrown footfalls
Autumn lit at summers end

Any comments will be gratefully acknowledged.

J D

[Frog]

Welcome to the forums, Sloely!
I look forward to seeing more of your self portrait project and maybe it will inspire me to get going on mine.
I like your composition but it appears you have exposed for the bright spots which leaves you, the main subject, in too much shadow and that leaf in front of your face is very distracting. Try some fill light or lighten shadows. Self portraits are difficult because you can't tell exaclty what's going to show and have to imagine what will be there when you are in position before your timer expires.
I'm writing this response as a critique of the photo. I'm not a big haiku fan but I see a lot of depth in yours.
I also like your sig quote.

[Sloley]

Dear Frog,

Thanks for the welcome and for the comments I'm grateful to you. I must explain that in this pic I was trying to be part of it and not the main subject and had tried a few other poses in different places to see what the result would be and preferred this one over the others where I was more highlighted.

I have named my project as a 'Figure in the landscape' one and have now edited it into my first post. The 'leaves' on my face are actually shadows and as for the exposure, well with a TtV contraption you just have to do your best. I really enjoy its quirky nature, the blurry effect, the bits of dust, the reflections and the double imaging.

I do hope I inspire you to begin your own self portraiture, it's such great fun :-)

J D

I paraphrased the sig from Thomas Joshua Cooper

[Frog]

You may want to look at this thread in the viewfinder forum Self Portraits 2009

There is a wide variety of self portraits there.

[Sloley]

Dear Frog,

Many thanks for the link, you are quite right there are a variety of self portraits there, some very intriguing ones too.

My turn to give you a link, this time to just one picture, some say 1907 others 1909, I think she would have preferred 1908 when she was 39 :-)

Here then is Annie W Brigman: http://tiny.cc/x9j0B

And my hurried Haiku;
Stretching skyward soul
I pose in nineteen o eight
One hundred years ago

And stretch she does, look at her skyward arm, look at the angle of her face, use a chair for support and try the pose for yourself and feel the intensity that she put into it.

Find some of her other images and see in her what Alfred Steiglitz saw, not just one picture but a series of related pictures, each one done as Minor White liked to point out with the one before and the next one in mind.

It is my belief that the making of a series or sequence or project is what the cameras unique method of making images is all about and thereby leaving the single 'stunning' image behind firmly in the hands of the the 19/20th century, but will that happen, I doubt it :-)

This sequence idea emerges from time to time among its recent advocates are, Paul Hill, John Blakemore, William Bishop and IPSE. Google will find them all.

J D

[Somebody]

Hi Sloley,

I have got to say I really like the setting and the blurred edging (including the frame around the outside). I also like how you can see the sky coming through in the top left of the picture.
I can see that you do not want to be the main focus of the photo, merely part of it. At one with it, not standing out. However, I do have to agree with Frog that the shadows do not help with this.

My suggest would be to try and get the sunlight in two main places - on your face, and on the fence in the background. I don't know if that would be possible (I think you're standing in the best position for your particular photograph, and the sun may not hit the two spots simultaneously), but they would be the 2 areas to highlight, in my opinion, for these reasons:
1) your face would make you stand out. Being completely in sunlight may draw too much focus to you, but the face alone may work. Though I think a mixture of shadow and sunlight over you would work too. Something that draws you out from the green and shadows, yet hides you as well. At the moment, you're too well hidden, and I think the glow of the skin would contrast nicely with the darkness of the shadows. However, I am aware it would also be possible that the skin is relevatively over-exposed if in the sunlight, so the settings would need to be just right.
2) The fence. More because I like it, and the sunlight picks it out for a nice little detail, which may well be lost if in the shadow!

Other than that, I think it's good!
As you go on, you'll learn more of what works and what doesn't, but I think you're starting off on a good foot here!

Hope that there's something useful in there - I'm nowhere near as experienced at this sort of thing as many within these forums are, so am still teaching myself the basics too!

Claire

[Frog]

That Soul of the Blasted Pine is a great piece of work.
The pose must have been difficult indeed!
How she seems to be an actual part of the 'blasted pine' with the lines of both the stump and her body and arms leads my eye up...just seems so natural and yet in reality isn't.
I hope you continue with this and hope to see more of what you've done soon.

[Greg McCary]

Here is one from the fair.