In January this year (2024) I set a new project for myself. Hold a selfie photography shoot at least once a month, every month for the entire year. Well, it is December 5th 2024 as I am writing this, and yesterday I had half and hour spare, so I grabbed the camera and the flash and had a mini-session which I will talk about a bit further into this blog.
Putting aside time for an organised shoot of myself, by myself every month was harder than I ever thought it would be. Getting the free time, setting up the camera and the lighting all takes time, but over this 12 month period I have learned so much from my shoots!
Every month I managed to get at least one selfie-session, which was usually between 45-90 minutes in length. On top of the time and set-up of the sessions, I have had to edit the images, which also took a lot of time. I also wanted to try something different in each shoot, so some sessions I was using 2 or even 3 flash set-ups.
What I lay out before you below is the result of the shoot from December 4th 2024. It has been progressively harder to find time for these shoots, as a few months ago we had a new puppy, so the spare time I have in the house alone, I now have a dog to contend with too (and yes, I have done a shoot with him – as could been seen in a recent Facebook post). I set up my Nikon Z6ii on the kitchen counter on a tripod, and I set-up the Godox TT685 on the counter at a right angle, also on a tripod. It was that simple, and let me work with the dog running around me!
Here are the six images from that shoot, edited in Photoshop.
I have really learned to control the light over the last 12 months, and also sculpture the light in editing a bit more to refine the look. As you know, I am not usually a huge black and white fan, but during this project, I have quite a few black and white images.
Talking of images for the project, up until now I have not counted how many I have. Ideally they will be in printed book form, but I am sure that I will also do a digital version too… So… let me go count my images…. <5 minutes later> … 212 edited images!
I am really looking forward to putting the project together, but I think I just want one more shoot this month, and then I will be happy.