Self portraits, yo

RyanMTaylor · Nov 8, 2008

Here are a few self portraits that were taken today.

These first 2 are definitely meant to reflect my personality. On the edge, or however you'd like to say it ha.

It's overexposed toward the top of the frame. Anyone know a good way of avoiding this aside from merging an HDRI?

Not happy with the DOF on this one. Should I have went with a higher fstop possibly?

I was trying to give the bg more DOF but I'm still new at this. Is there any way other than a larger aperture to increase DOF?

Oh, and a few PP things done to the last 2 I made were a slight levels adjustment on eyes and a zit here and there removed.

Davey Jones · Nov 8, 2008

well im new at this myself, but im sure someone will correct me if im wrong.

on the first 2 pics the center of focus seems to be at the top, your clothing
being the most sharply focused element in the pic.
you realy want to center the focus in the center of the stairs.
since were looking at basicly a plane at a low angle you dont have
to be perfect about it dont worry about leaning forward and sticking the cam out
to get it to focus on the stairs, wich can be tricky with autofocus and steep angles like that.

for the other pics you need to move the camera farther away and zoom in if you can.
FOV is a ratio, and the further away the cam is from the subject the larger the FOV is.

RyanMTaylor · Nov 8, 2008

Oh okay. I see. The thing about my clothes being in focus was kind of for a reason though. I'm meant to be the subject of the shot. I don't want the stairs to be the subject, just a bg element. I'm also not using AF for these shots. Not sure if that clears things up. Although I wanted the shot to speak for itself so I'm guessing I'm doing something wrong.

The FOV thing is helpful. I didn't really understand the relationship between DOF and focal length. Thanks.