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| Captured by my sister; Edited by yours truly |
They say that a good photographer should be able to model too. That way, the photographer understands what the model is going through when she steps in front of the camera. The photographer who is able to do the poses him/herself is then able to demonstrate for the model in case the model can't grasp what he/she is trying to say.
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Growing up, I was never really a fan of being in front of the camera. My dad himself was a photography enthusiast too in his younger days. So as a kid, he placed me in front of the camera a lot. I would make funny faces on purpose, and now that I think about it, I really wasted a lot of his film. Sorry dad, I regret it now. I always preferred to hold the camera, as a kid and as an adult. Not much has changed since I was a kid if you ask me.
I've never really been confident of my looks, hence further contributing to me refusing to be in front of the camera.
That changed when I went for instawalks. My friend/teacher, Ivan, would get me to model for him. You can probably imagine how awkward I was, since I'm rarely in front of the camera. No clue on what to do with my hands, should I smile or not? It was harder than taking photos, that was for sure.
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| Captured by my friend, Ivan; Edited by yours truly |
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| Captured by my friend, Ivan; Edited by yours truly |
With each shoot that I did afterwards, I began to try doing the poses myself before getting the models to do it. I don't know why either, but it helped me to visualise the shot better. I would face the mirror to practise my own expressions at home. And it helped. It was easier to show models what kind of pose you want as compared to describing it (if you don't have a photo). I don't always save photos of the poses I want my models to do, so showing them myself is much easier.
And as such, I thought of putting myself in front of the lens more often. Don't get me wrong, I have no intentions of becoming a model and abandoning my hobby of holding a camera. Instead, I just wish to be more open to standing in front of this camera I hold so often. I realised I could do some whacky expressions with my face so that's something I'm experimenting with. In fact, I got my sister to take some photos of me when we were at Hawpar Villa just the other day. Sadly, apart from the cover photo of this post, I won't be showing you the other photos from that shoot. Let's just say I look too unglam.
In order to take more glamorous photos, I decided to bring it indoors and did a self portrait shoot. Switched on the aircon, controlled how much sunlight entered the room, set up my tripod, and snapped away. I was really just fumbling around since I didn't know what to do. I found myself going for something simpler as I went, focusing on the light more. Once I found the perfect spot in the room to shoot at, found the perfect settings I tried taking with different clothes on. I probably looked like a joke doing everything alone, from wardrobe to taking of the photos.
As you can probably see from the photos below, I really like this hat of mine. Other hats just don't do as much justice to me. I used the hat in all my photos because my hair looks horrendous. I have a lot of acne as well, so this shoot was a good opportunity for me to practise healing on Lightroom.
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| Casual / Natural enough for you? |
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| Just pretending to smile at some passer by when I'm really just looking at the window |
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| Happened to buy a turtleneck from Uniqlo so here's me being artsy fartsy |
In case anyone was wondering, I used a 35mm f/1.8 for the self portraits and the Hawpar Villa shoot. It was too tight in the room for a 50mm so the 35mm came in pretty handy. Whereas for Hawpar, I forgot to bring my 50mm out so I had to settle for 35mm.
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