Self Climbing Portraits

Prezwoodz

So I had to take some self portraits for a class I am taking and figured I would do it outside since thats where I feel I belong.

The first photo I took in color and coverted it to black and white using the calculations method which is my favorite even though I am still learning it. I still make the photo darker then is probably appropriate but its what I prefer so I am training myself to lighten them up a bit. Also I did take this picture of myself, half way up a climbing wall, there was nobody else around. That was interesting.



Then I took a few for fun.

heatherfeather

I love the last one, just because you can see your fingerprints so clearly. Though you look like one of my kids... waiting to jump out and scare somebody...

Props to you for figuring out a way to do a self portrait on the middle of a climb. You are either superman or crazy! :crazy But it is a really neat photo with the k nowledge that you did it yourself.

humanrr

I much prefer the first shot.

The last shot is a bit disturbing to me as it looks like you are about to strangle the viewer.

If you want to feature your hands, perhaps you could do a variant on the first shot where only your hands on the rocks are visible. I remember Harrison Ford did an ad campaign for a watch, I believe, in which all you saw was his hands clawing through some dirt. Even without knowing who it was, you could tell this was a man who was rugged and comfortable outdoors.

Prezwoodz

Thanks for the comments! My girlfriend said something similar to both of you guys as far as the last picture goes. Then she said, "Its not really menacing....but it could be!"

The point of the assignment was to have 1 picture with a great depth of field, even though my hand is blurry its actually a pretty large depth of field on the first picture.

And another with a super shallow dof. Which are my last two pictures.

DoctorIt

A darker side of Kelsey.... ooooooooh!


Combine 2 and 3, and I think you have a narrow depth winner. In 2, your hands are placed such that they are really just distracting me from the portrait. If they were moving, they may convey some sense of action to you, but as they are, just in the way (to my eye). However, I do like the brighter treatment in 2. But 3 is unique - closeup of a climber's hands. Maybe you'd have to be a climber to get it, or at least the title of the photo would have to be "climber", but the detail in the hands with the face in the background, tells the story. I dig it. I'd lighten up 3 to look more like 2.

Kinkajou

HA! I have to say that as a climber myself, the last image to me was clearly someone mentally working through a problem on sight and didn't even have anything scary about it until someone else mentioned it

And really, were you free soloing and stopped to do some shots? Please tell me you had some gear clipped in somewhere or that at least you were bouldering and it wasn't too high...

I do like the shots, though. The first and last are really nice and the BW conversions look good. I love that last one. Well done!

Prezwoodz

Thanks for all the replies and helpful comments that can help me get better! I appreciate them all!

DoctorIt - I'll have to give that a try and see what it looks like. Thanks!

Kinkajou , first of all your name brings back some great memories!





And second I was actually half way up a climb but I was also toprope soloing. I used a gorillapod to setup the camera and then used a remote timer to tell it to take a picture every 10 seconds. I was trying to figure out what worked for the gorillapod and so I am going to refine the process soon. As it was it was kind of a mess!
Here is my setup:


I also checked out your galleries and am commenting! Great stuff! Dgrin needs more climbers!

B Rock

You resemble will ferrell in the second image lol. Nice shots either way though!