With baseball season coming up soon, I threw on a Mariners hat and tried a self portrait in my kitchen--pretty unsuccessfully. First challenge was that while it was nice to have a swiveling screen and Live View, there wasn't enough light for it to focus once I triggered the shutter. So, I ended up having to focus manually on the Live View screen and then step back (because my wireless shutter release has a dead battery).
Second challenge was in trying to find a way to bounce the flash off the cabinets (and stainless steel fridge) in my kitchen in a way to try and soften the light. In general terms, the bigger the light source, the softer the light. Flashes are a relatively small light source and the end result is a hard shadow. By bouncing a flash against a wall, it spreads the light out across the wall (or ceiling) and it, in effect, becomes a bigger light source.
In this photo, you can see that bouncing it softened it a little bit (the softer shadow from the bill of the hat), and that I bounced it camera left, while I was facing in the direction the flash was pointed.
Anyway, here's a lame self-portrait. Go M's.
Olympus E-620. 35mm Macro @ f5.0. 1/125 @ ISO 100. Flash: FL-36. Because I knew it wasn't a very good photo, I just post processed in Picasa. Cropped, tuning of fill light, highlights and shadows--and of course, converted to B&W.
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