Self Portrait

A challenge was set by a group of photographers to take a self portrait. Cool self portraits contain cool young people, not musty old men, so I had to do something different. For some time I’d wanted to trial a make up artist and find a source of theatrical costumes so this was my opportunity. A search of the internet found a place the hires out hundreds of costumes for amateur dramatics less than 20 miles away, a walk down the street to the local beauticians revealed that they employ a lady that has won competitions for stage make up but all she ever gets to do is bridal make up etc. Needless to say she jumped at the chance to do something different.

I’ve never taken a self portrait before and when you are alone in the studio it presents some challenges of its own…setting the point of focus, you can’t see the flashing red light of the self timer if the lens hood is on. I don’t have a remote trigger so I had to get up to press the shutter and check what sort of expression I managed to pull, which meant that I moved and lost the point of focus. But it was great fun, especially when a customer unexpected dropped into the studio to order some prints!