Day of the dead photo shoot.

So i managed to get my 'day of the dead' inspired photoshoot up and running.  To start with i planned how i was going to shoot it. I decided that to make this more interesting for me, that it was to be a self portrait, and that i wanted it to be just a close up of my face, So for the perpose of self portraits i got Camera control pro 2 which allowed me to control my camera via my laptop, which ment that using my laptops remote i could change iso,shutter speed, appature. I also wanted to create rather a contrasted image so i adjusted the exposure compensation.  I desided to light it using avalible lighting and a flash gun, which i did move after the first couple of shots. I also desided to make a time lapse video while applying the makeup, just for a bit of fun, i have a feature to do that on my webcam, and now i have found out that camera control pro 2 also allows me to do that.
this is the time lapse of my prep:



So here is what i achieved doing this photoshoot:

after the first few images i adjusted the flash gun slightly to get better light by adding a diffuser as well as adjusting the location. i also decided to encorperate some small skull heads that i owned to recreate the look of the Mexican Madness shoot that i featured earlier in my blog. While i lke the straight on portraits, i think te images that stand out mainly to me are the photos that are almost extreme close ups and strange crops of the images. i really like the close up of the mouths and the close up of the face. I guess it links to my passion for surrealism and there way of 'cutting' or cropping the photo on just one body part, detacting the audience from the body as a whole. maybe this is something for me to look into? i also like the playfulness of some of the photos.

So i thought i would share a few of my fave images  from the shoot:

Its really strange, i was rather confused that i prefered images of mine that wasnt like the photoshoot of Mexican Madness, but rather my own ones.  I also found it really easy to take the photos, normally with models i find it hard to ask them to do what i would like and i guess by cutting the middle man out i feel alot more at ease. i dont really do alot of portraits as i really dont like my self image, my self esteme is rather low, so maybe this is something i can explore more? self portraiture and experiment with using myself. I do feel that part of me wants to make this more personal to myself and maybe that is one way of doing it.