This self-portrait shoot was at Evelyn Hallman Park- a beautiful location in Tempe, AZ. Evelyn Hallman is not on any of the lists I’ve seen for premier locations, but I was pleased with the variety of backgrounds.
Anyway, this was one of my first official shoots where I thought a lot more about my poses, lighting and the camera lens I used. Below I have the settings for the majority of images I took on this day. I have two Canon cameras; I have used Canon since the beginning of my photography so I won’t ever switch.
In general, I am not just going to post my best images and the ones that I edited. I want to add learning opportunities whenever possible- and I want to improve my skills. For this reason, I am going to include photos to my blogs (and this one) that demonstrates what I could do better.
I generally take all of my images in RAW- (gives you more editing controls). I forgot to set my camera to the RAW mode at the start of this, so there are one or two that I wont’ be able to give the shooting details.
You can see at f 2/8, the background will blur. The further away the background is, the more blur you will have.
I don’t own horses or live on a ranch- but I’m going to take photos with my cowgirl hat anyway by golly. Overall, I was happy with this shot. I like my head placement and the angle of my arm holding the brim of the hat. The background is the same color as my hat- so it doesn’t pop the way I would like. I tried to “color” in the background to be green. With my current editing skills in Photoshop, it didn’t look right so I just left it.
I like the overall composition- but I clearly had deer in the headlights look. 🙂 I didn’t realize how low my shutter speed was either. My face is a bit blurry due to the low shutter. As the sun sets, typically you should increase your ISO. This will automatically increase your shutter speed. Remember- the smaller your F stop number, the more light you allow in. So if I increased my F stop to F5/6 or higher, this lets LESS light in.
On a side note, my critiques do not mean that I am apologizing for my photos. This is me being real; and I don’t take myself so seriously that I can’t mention things I would do differently (Or what I’m self-conscious of). I am learning a lot and want to point out areas to improve, etc. along the way so others can learn as well.
This was taken during golden hour and so I put my face directly in the sun. I did not edit this photo at all- the best part about taking photos in the sunset light is that it fills in a lot of wrinkles naturally! You can still see lines on my neck however- which I do edit these out sometimes using the Patch tool in photoshop. This is one of my go to Tools for editing wrinkles quickly and naturally!
I hope you enjoyed this post- and learned a few things along the way. Comments and constructive criticism are always welcome! Please feel free to leave your thoughts below.
Thanks- and have….and Amazing Day!!
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