A Self-Portrait and How I Did It

Over the last few months, I’ve been shooting fairly regular self-portraits. Nothing extravagant- just 10 minute set-ups- and they’ve been useful in trying out different ideas and techniques. This self-portrait below was taken in daylight, so I decided to use some off-camera flash to allow me to expose the shot as if it was night. For this kind of thing I usually just use one off-camera flash but I thought I’d add in a second flash and fire it through the ballustrades than run along the landing at the top of our stairs to create some shadows on the wall behind me. In this shot, I’m actually sat on the stairs, so the camera is high above me and pointing down towards where I’m sat. The key light (for non-photographers, the key light is the main light) is placed on the top step with a book being used as a ‘gobo’ (a gobo is anything that ‘goes between’ the light and the camera to shape the light) to deflect and prevent the flash from spilling onto the wall and creating a hot spot. Here’s the set-up, and below that, the shot…