Taking Care of Myself

Day 4 of the free online photography class I’m taking, hosted by Else Kramer.

It’s been a busy and mainly exhausting day, because Thursdays are for therapy. Going through all the horror of my past is extremely hard, but after two years, it’s already starting to make a difference. I’m able to actually find the beauty in life and sometimes there’s a spark of being happy. I’m not there yet and I’ve got a long way to go and some very hard work needs to be done, but I know I’m a hard worker and I can do this. It’s like the quote I saw on Pinterest “Sometimes I feel like giving up, but then I’ve got a lot of motherfuckers to proove wrong”. Too many people have tried to make my life a living hell, but I’m determined to make my life livable.

Today’s photo challenge was about capturing movement. The Golden Age painter Frans Hals was really great at making his portraits vivid. I absolutely love this one of a drunk man who clearly couldn’t sit still for a second.

I experimented with all kinds of things, but ended taking a self portrait again. I actually like it. I didn't even have to crop the photo, which is a major improvement for me.

The photo looked like someone elses hands were gently going over my face in a very caring way. With the therapy session still on my mind, I came up with the title “Taking Care of Myself”, which is one of the things I’m learning.

I don't own any professional studio equipment, so I used the light of the lamp that hangs over my dining table. That gave too much of a shadow behind me, so I took a standing lamp that has 3 spotlights (from Ikea), set it at the side of me with only 1 spot pointed at me. That cleared the shadow.

I only did a few adjustments in post processing (whitebalance, exposure, saturation).

Exif data for who wants to know: Pentax K5-II, Vivitar1 100mm macro lens, F22, ISO 400, 3 sec.

Thank you so much for visiting. There’ll be another challenge in my mailbox tomorrow. I’d love to hear your feedback, so please leave me a comment. Bye for now!