James Wood Photography

I took this photo as part of my 52 Project. That is, one self-portrait a week, every week, for a year. I like the coincidence of this photo marking my last days of being 27, as well as being the 27th photo in the series! I am pleased with how this turned out, especially because there was very little photoshop fiddling.

This photo uses two separate flashes. One is immediately behind my head, pointing straight at the camera. That’s what gives the fuzzy top hat the cool “halo” outline.  The other flash is in front of me on a (very messy) coffee table, pointing up at my face. It has a square cardboard tube around it, which the flash shines through. That’s called a “snoot”. At the far end of the snoot, there is a plastic grid. The grid constrains the light into a tight circle, which is why there is very little stray background light. The flash behind me is triggered with a cheap radio trigger, the one in front is a slave. It fires when it sees the first one go off. 

The wall behind me is not black! I’m standing in my lounge room. The ambient light is underexposed so far that it looks black, and the tight focusing of the flash means that there is pretty much nothing illuminating the wall behind me. The small amount of stray light was cleaned up with Levels in Photoshop.

The only other digital manipulation was the darkening of the 27 on my face. I really did draw it on, with a whiteboard marker. Unfortunately it wasn’t a dark enough colour and it really washed out under the brightness of the flash.

Here’s a video showing the setup! And my inky face!

So! Nothing too tricky; really simple lighting, but a very cool effect.