Self Portrait

As all other photographers, I tried today to take a self portrait. The problem is though I can get everything right- composition, lighting, position etc., the lens I am using does not auto focus. Its an very old Nikon 50mm 1.8 Series E AIS lens-

The lens is not very sharp, at least compared to modern lenses. Even my 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G lens is sharper than this one.

So when I was trying to get a sharp photo of me, I was getting blurred images or images focused on my ears. Not good.

So I thought- well, if I can't get sharp pictures, lets make a blurry self portrait. So took a lot of photos. I am posting two of the best of them.

In this first one, I like the angle of the image and reflection of the laptop screen on my glasses. Also this one is not post processed. Just changed the white balance and cropped in photoshop.

I like this one. Because though its blurry, my facial structure can be recognized and all the hills and valleys on my face is not entirely visible. Also this photo was post processed using photoshop. I changed the white balance and played with the exposure settings in Adobe Camera Raw. Then in photoshop made a BW layer and blended in screen mode.

Also I used my SB-25 flash for the lighting. It was on my desk on the left of the camera, perpendicular to my face and the camera. The flash was fired using the Cactus V4 remote triggers onto the wall to get a semi decent diffused light.