Self portraits & struggles

I got into this self portrait business way before I even knew what it was called. I was new to social media and I really wanted my profile picture to bang. This was probably back in 2007/2008. I remember the struggle to take pictures with a point and shoot, getting the right angle and light to get a clear image. Looking back the quality was obviously trash but I made trash art lol. Anyway I've evolved from my 12 pixel or less (can't remember) days and I'm grateful.

Once upon a time it was routine to take pictures of myself at least once a week but somewhere along the line I wasn't feeling it. I haven't been on here in a long time (standard) but of recent I've barely been active on my IG.

After what felt like an eternity I took my camera out and decided I wanted to take pictures of myself cause why not. I have way too much free time, might as well practice taking portraits.

Now usually I know everything is easy and I get the job done with a few tries but I struggled a little this time around.

Struggle 1

My camera went off mid shot (low battery).
I was using a fujifilm xt20 and the nice thing about taking self portraits with it, is that there's less hassle trying to get the camera to focus. I set my timer at 10 seconds, sat on a bench with white walls as my background and the only source of light was coming from a window.
I shot RAW images of course with a 16-50mm kit lens. I maintained ISO 2500 & 1/125sec. I pretty much played around with the zoom depending on what shot I was going for which meant my f stop was adjusted occasionally. The most annoying part about shooting with my fuji would probably be the need to have enough light for sharper images other than that she's a beauty and I can't wait to try out other lens.

Struggle 2

After I lost the power on my fuji, I decided to carry on cause I was in the zone. Whipped out my canon 650D and that's when I met up with struggle number 2. Considering it'd been a while since I used it, my trigger's battery had run out which meant I had to have my hand on the shutter release, get it to focus then sit and pose while the timer counts down. Now this means that there was a high chance at least half the pictures would end up blurred. Wahala! My solution to that was taking close up images only.
I have to say I'd almost forgotten how amazing images are on a canon. I used my 50mm 1.8 lens and pretty much had one hand on the shutter release while posing with the other hand or balancing myself. Shutter speed was at 1/80 sec and obviously f1.8 but here I played around with the ISO.

Goshi Masha Allah

I should have probably mentioned it in the beginning but if it wasn't obvious, my camera was mounted on a tripod.

All in all, it feels like a nice reintroduction to photography. The thing I like most about having limited equipments is that it forces your creativity to come out a little. Do what you must as long as you get your shot! Make sure you have an idea of what you want your final image to look like and start from there.

To recap; I used natural light from one window, a tripod, fujifilm xt20 16-50mm and canon 650d 50mm, white walls, make up by me (yes I had make up on, shoutout to fenty beauty) and lastly photoshop for a little bit of skin retouching and Lightroom for a few adjustments.

Link to the tutorial I followed if you'd like to try out skin retouching.
Tutorial 1 & Tutorial 2


Thanks for reading. Happy to answer questions and hear some tips and your experiences with shooting self portraits or portraits.

Aisha
xx