2008.02.01.thing.a.day

i am participating in the 2008 thing-a-day, and today is the first day. the idea is that you make something every day, and it should only take you 20-60 minutes to make. also, you should complete it, or at least complete some aspect of a larger project, i think. for my first thing-a-day, i took a couple of self-portraits. they were lit using refrigerator lighting, and i got the idea to do this because my friend started a flickr group dedicated to portraits like these. here are my results:

if you click on the photos, they will take you to my flickr page, and you can click to see more detail. the first photo was taken by placing the camera on a step ladder next to the fridge so that i was lit from the side. i touched it up because i couldn't get the depth of field that i wanted from my camera---i blurred the background more and also made the fridge brighter and wall darker. there are some matte line issues that i may try to fix at some point (see lower left part of the image where the hair is layered over the fridge; also, along the right edge, there is kind of a halo between my hair and the wall behind me...)

the second photo has some subtle color and level adjustments and was also cropped, but is otherwise untouched. the camera was placed inside the fridge on the top shelf.

i haven't updated my blog in over a year now, so i thought thing-a-day would be a good way for me to get back into it.