Week One: Self Portrait

             "Loving oneself isn't hard, when you understand who and what 'yourself' is. It has nothing to do with the shape of your face, the size of your eyes, the length of your hair or the quality of your clothes. It's so beyond all of those things and it's what gives life to everything about you. Your own self is such a treasure."

One: Self Portrait

        As always, the theme this week was Self Portrait. I procrastinated until the very end to take my photo (as evidenced by my smudged eyeliner that I noticed during post processing). I tried to do a cheerier and more Gaia-like photo this time around. I knew I wanted to have flowers in my portrait. So I made a floral crown of pine leaves, little pink and yellow roses with a few other random plant things stuffed in between. Believe it or not, it took me three hours to make that headpiece! 

       For my setup, I hung my favorite black backdrop against a bookshelf and positioned my camera on tripod approximately four feet in front of where I'd be sitting. Thereafter, I quickly did my makeup, fixed my fair, threw on a knit sweater and affixed my crown. I sat a foot away from the back drop and began shooting. After 137 takes, I figured I'd review what I had. I narrowed my options to 5 shots and began editing. 

       I added a bit of clarity around my eyes for an extra pop and tweaked the RGB curve for a more matte-look. A few more tweaks were made in the red, orange and yellow tones so that the image would not appear overly saturated in the matte color tone.

       I'm not entirely happy with the final edit, but I had to submit before the deadline (otherwise, the Clicktator would kill me). I'm super excited to see all the selfies this week, especially since we have so many new members! Be sure to check out the 52 Frames facebook page!