Photo Challenge: For Carolina

Hello Everyone,

A while back, I challenged my good friend (and photographer) Carolina Yocom to a photo challenge during a Google+ Hangout. The challenge was something like this: Make a photo of yourself staring dead-on into the camera. The reason? She's very good at making self portraits of herself in beautifully lit poses, but never dead-on from the front. She fought with her photo, but her final portrait was excellent. You can see her photo on her blog.

In exchange, her challenge to me was this: Make a dramatic portrait of myself, but.... don't use off-camera flash. She knew what my weakness was! I light almost everything I shoot. I've spent the past year strengthening my "off-camera flash mixed with ambient light" skills, so being limited to what I could use without using off-camera was a challenge.

I fought with it for weeks...designing and redesigning the concept in my head. Tonight, I managed to capture this:

It's amazing how much you can get sick of seeing your own face while editing (for all 30 seconds that I touched this photo)... How do you feel about self-portraits?

Anyway, Caro, I hope you think I did okay. XOXO.


PS- For the photo nerds that always love to know settings for photos.... I don't know how I shot this... but I'm guessing: 1/2" @ f/8 @ ISO200. Light source is a single shop-light from the shed... probably a 100watt bulb. I dunno... I was busy.