For those of you who follow me on Instagram or even TikTok, if you don’t I’ll link my accounts😊, then you would know that last week I did a series of photoshoot with just me myself and I and my camera of course! I was trying to think of some way to be able to keep using my camera while in quarantine but in a safe way so I figured why not just take some photos of myself! But I didn’t want them to be just any boring old photos, I wanted them to be different and somewhat unique, as unique as I could get in this day and age of social media!
Now to photograph all of these shoots I did use a timer but Canon also offers an app called Camera Connect, where if your camera has WiFi capabilities it can connect to your phone through this app and you can see everything your camera sees straight on your phone without having to run back and forth to your camera to press a button ever time! It’s pretty nice! If your camera doesn’t have these capabilities, no worries, they make Bluetooth remotes you can also link to your camera or even chords you can buy and link to a computer so you can shoot and view your photos from there as you take them, just like the Canon app.
Retro Vinyls
Day 1 started off pretty simple. I decided to take advantage of my vinyl collection I have and do something with those. So I chose a few of my most “retro” vinyls, put together an outfit that goes with the vibe and got to shooting! This shoot was a lot of fun because I got to bring out more of my 60s/70s retro vibe that I love and I got to wear a few of my favorite pieces of clothes I own, I’ll be linking clothes at the bottom of this blog. This shoot was kind of hard to come up with different poses to do when I’m in a smaller space and I only have myself to control everything during the shoot but I think I made it work!
Photoshop Butterflies
Day 2 I decided to not only test my skill of photographing myself but also test my skill in Photoshop! Since its spring time I wanted a couple of these shoots to be “springy” so I thought to myself “what is spring?” And besides flowers and Easter and all of those I decided to go with butterflies! For this one I had to do a little more research than the other shoots because I had to see how I should place my hands when you hold a butterfly and since I didn’t have any actual butterflies to work with I had to use my imagination (cue Spongebob voice and rainbow hand motion). After I looked at a few photos on Pinterest and got to shoot I got the hang of it more as I kept going and then it wasn’t so hard to figure out how to pose myself the hard part came after. Now I took multiple Photoshop classes in college so I know quite a bit about it but I rarely use it with my photography business except for when I have to remove people or objects from background, but I haven't added things to photos since college but it was time brush up my skills. After editing each photo individually and differently for 3 hours I was finally finished! It’s not the greatest Photoshop work ever but I am pretty proud of myself!
Light and Shadows
Day 3 was probably the most challenging for me to shoot because I knew I wanted to play with light and shadows but I wasn’t exactly sure how or what I was going to do! So I grabbed some supplies that I figured would work and look cool if the sunlight hit it just right and then I headed upstairs to the loft area in my house because the big window up there had a lot of light shining through. I decided to start with this lace kimono I have and I knew I wanted it to make cool shadows on my face but I had know idea how I was going to get that to work! After many different positions and getting very frustrated I finally figured out a way to set up my kimono so that it would hit the sun just right and cast cool shadows on my face by setting my tripod up in the window and draping my kimono over it and laying down and shooting just my face but upside! Next I moved onto playing with CDs! The CDs weren’t that challenging to photograph with, the only thing I had trouble with them was finding the right position for the cds in front of my face so the light would reflect onto me just right. After that I just kind of played around with other items I had like my phone and a moon shaped mirror. I think they all turned out pretty cool in the end.
Camera Collection
Day 4 was a little more laid back and probably the simplest and fastest shoot out of all of these for me! I decided to incorporate my love for photography with this one and all the different kinds of cameras I have that span from multiple different decades. Most of the older cameras are from my great grandpa so they are very special to me and sit on display in my office! For this shoot I just chose a cute and simple outfit and added a few accessories and then grabbed all of my cameras and just started shooting away! Doing different angles, POVs and just anything I could think of that would look cool with all the cameras. I even tried to recreate a photo that was taken of Marilyn Monroe while she was holding a camera. Even though this shoot was the simplest for me its one of my favorites!!
Fruity
Day 5 got a little funny and included more photoshop, but not as much as the butterflies. I had a few different ideas for what kind of shoot i wanted to do for this day but then ultimately decided to go with fruit and I am so happy with how they turned out! For this one I only had two types of fruit in my house and with the global pandemic happening outside I didn’t really want to go to the store, so bananas and apples it is! I luckily had a yellow and a red shirt to wear and then I got to mess around with some fun makeup looks and then I started shooting. This shoot was pretty fast as well because there is only so many poses you can do with a banana and an apple but I still had fun with it! After the shoot i imported the photos into photoshop and just made the backgrounds more fun in the photos so they were just blank walls and I love them!!
Painting a Photo
Day 6 got a little challenging and probably had the most work put into it because I did a makeup look that took me a little bit to figure out and then after I took the photos I had to use photoshop again. For this one I decided to play with paint but I didn’t really want to make that big of a mess, especially since the room I was shooting in has carpet, so cue Photoshop! Literally ever stroke or splatter fo plaint you see in these photos was all done in photoshop. My makeup was just watered down eyeshadow I painted onto my face. This shoot and the editing afterwards probably took me about 4/5 hours, with the getting ready included beforehand but it was well worth it!
Spring in the Woods
Day 7! The final day of my self timer series. Now since this day was Easter I wanted to do a spring shoot and also have the chance to still wear my dress I bought for Easter because it is to gorgeous of a dress to go to waste! This time I got ready and then packed up all my gear into my car and headed out to Oak Openings Metropark about 25 minutes away, my dad even decided to tag along just to get out of the house. We get to the park and its a little busy because its a nice day out but Oak Openings is so big the whole time I was shooting, for probably a good 30/45 minutes, nobody even came close to us until I was packing up to leave. The location I decided to go to for these photos is one I take my clients to when they choose this park because I absolutely love the lines of trees and the lighting you get in this area every single time! I had never gotten my photos taken here before so I was very excited for this shoot! I set up my camera on the tripod, connected my phone to the camera and then started shooting. I had to walk back to the camera a few times if I needed to change the angle or orientation of the camera, the app takes the photos but it doesn’t control the tripod, but other than that this photoshoot was pretty simple and ended up being my favorite out of all of the shoots I did this week!
Well there you have it. That’s how I did my Self-Timer photo series last week! I had so much fun with this series and cant wait to do more again!! If there is anything you liked to see my do, leave a comment below or email me separately through my contact page! Also let me know which self timer shoot you enjoyed the most!
Positive Vibes. Positive Mind.
Courtney✌🏻
Here are links to some of the clothes I wore in these photos...
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