Who am I?

Yesterday my Dad said it seemed like I'd like to look at pictures of me. I didn't quite understand and was a little confused. After I asked him he explained: Well, you take a lot of self portraits.
I couldn't help but laugh. Just to make this clear: I'm not taking self portraits so I can look at them later and think "Oh, I'm so pretty!". You know the pictures of teenagers where they're standing in the bathroom in front of the mirror and take a lot of photos of themselves? I don't do that. I don't know if we have something in common, those teenagers and me. I guess something we do have in common is that we want to know "Who am I?"
A little difference is that they seem to focus on how they look while I focus on how I am. What are the distinctive things that make me "me"? How do I want people to see me? How do I feel about certain things?
What expression, posture, clothing, background, colors, texture, and style best express the real me?

Well, but the mainly reason I take self portraits: you have model who is always available and works for free ;) All my friends are living all over the place in Franconia and I have to take the train everywhere so I don't see them every day. This will hopefully change when I go back to school.

There are some great photographers out there who are doing a lot of self portraits:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurazalenga/ (She's just like one of the most amazing photographers ever.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chiie/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ronaaa/sets/72157621581971199/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikolinelr/page4/

So, done.

week 23 - skeptical

Skeptical? Indifferent? Pensive? Shy?

week 11 - surreal reflections

My mother doesn't believe me I didn't edit this picture. It's my little brother's silhouette in front of the reflections of the sky in the lake. Simple, maybe a little weird, but I like it. Shows his nice profile.

Last week (also last week of summer break) my family and I went to "our" lake, stayed for a couple of days in our old trailer and every day we went swimming, canoeing and strolling through the woods, discovering all kind of stuff...didn't see any spectacular sunsets so I tried to make them more interesting by putting an sailboat and the silhouette of my little brother in the pic.




I also decided to use a new design. Babyblue. The old one was too distracting, I wanted a simple one and now it looks like I'm advertising for babyblue socks. Not quite sure about the color. Well, at least it's simple.

week 6 - Barefoot!

You'll never get bored when you have a camera.




I also took some pics of Jessi and her little family and it was not easy. I don't like telling people where to stand and how to look, I have no idea how I make them look good. The pics are cute because my models were really cute and pretty, but I did a really bad job in showing that *sigh*


Whatever, here is the rest as a collage:


And also a little spontaneous dog photo shooting.

week 5 - I don't like studio portraits...

... but I like little babies and Cowgirls.



My sister visited us for a couple of days and I took some pictures of my little nephew and his Dad. I wish I had a real studio, at the moment I have to use blankets and white paperboard...sigh...no money to buy all the stuff I need...damn it, Photography is a expensive hobby.
I'd love to buy the 70-200 4L lense, but have you seen the price? I also really wanna buy Photoshop, right now I'm working with Picasa and Gimp. It's alright to do the basic stuff like cropping, brightening the pictures up, but Photoshop has more options in terms of retouching, color adjustments, sharpening and softening selected parts of the picture and so on. Well, I'm just gonna keep putting money aside.

Well, so the conditions in my self made studio were pretty bad(bad light, not enough space and not enough white blankets ;) ), I tried my best and here are the results. What I don't like is the perspective. Janto looks a little unproportional because I used a focal lenght of 18mm because I didn't have enough space... good to know for next time.

Oh, and I know, my editing in the next three pictures is terrible. I told you: I really need Photoshop :D




And Janto makes really funny faces.






I also took a picture of a friend of mine. I really like it, I just love her blue eyes, the cowboy hat.