Week 11 BOC: Self Portrait

 

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My self-portrait depicts how I feel from time to time about myself and how life is going for me at the moment. One point of view of myself is calm, life in black and white, nothing out of the ordinary and everything in its place. This is the persona I present to the world, a false face so nobody can see the turmoil and the chaotic mess that is my inner self. The inner me, the hidden side of my life is like a described. Chaotic and in turmoil, I am bathed in the blood of my youth and possibly the blood of my future. I am on uncertain ground with no heading or direction. Blood is the only companion I have to keep me company, its all I can recall rom my youth. Without it I would be even more lost and directionless because the pain of the past is what makes me the individual I am today. I am creative and visual oriented because it was my only way to escape the harsh reality of a troubled youth. I would imagine scenes and act like I was taking pictures until I was able to buy a camera and then I actually took the pictures.

The first half of this photograph was taken in studio with me sitting in a chair and the camera positioned over me shoulder while I am looking into a stand up mirror. The second half was taken on some railroad tracks, with me on my knees and the camera facing me as an assistant poured fake blood over my head to show my inner trauma.  Only an on camera flash was used for the railroad shot and a single strobe key light with a 24” softbox was used to get the low key lighting of the studio.

 

Week 10 EOC: Things I have yet to do

For my final project for Business of Photography class, I still need to do the following to be certain it is complete and turned in on time.
 Here goes, I need to:

• Need to make a Fax Page
• Need to make a Letter Head
• Need to make an entire page of business cards, not just my single ones I use
• Need to make sure all my tweets and up to date, currently they are
• Need to make sure I got all my quotes in place
• Buy more paper holders to display work
• Print all blog photo challenges in color
• Make sure all my blogs are approximately 300 words each
• Make sure I show up to class that day 
• Make sure I bring my portfolio for review and grading

This is pretty much the remainder of what I have to do to finish my project. As long as I keep at it, it is still manageable and I wont fall behind but if I goof off any, I might be in the hurt box for sure. Just need to do a little bit each day before next Monday and it should be easy.

BOC Photo Challenge: Fashion

I took this image of a model I use on a regular basis. I lovingly refer to her as my Muse and count her as a friend. Her name is Vynnie C. and she is a very smart woman, who originally made to our Country from Cuba on a raft as a child. I took this image in studio using a seamless backdrop of grey. I used two strobe lights, one key light from the left and the fill from the right. I was going for a darker moody look but not to dark. I asked that she do her makeup dark and bring dark outfits to wear. Vynnie is a Cheerleader and knows how to move and twist her body to make herself look more desirable than I have found most models are able to do, as demonstrated in this image. Vynnie is always willing to help me out and hasn't told me "no" yet to a crazy idea for a shoot or when to shoot. She has gone beyond the call of duty to help me and I think because of that, we have never had a "bad shoot" where neither of us walked away with nothing we like. Its usually the opposite, where we have to much to choose from.