Wrong side of the camera

Apart from a minor appearance alongside my Christmas desk, I don’t think I’ve appeared on my own blog yet, so perhaps it’s time for me to post a photo with me on the other side of the camera.  I guess given that I only post photographs that I’ve taken myself, and I have yet to do a proper self-portrait, it’s rare that there of photographs of me that I have taken myself.  And what ones there are were usually taken at arms length and have questionable composition and focus.  Not this one though, which is not only in focus, but also shows both my arms in full.

I took this shot (and yes, it was me that took it) as Aoife and I waited to board the last ferry from Alcatraz back to San Francisco after completing the night tour of the jail.

The camera I was using at the time was my Nikon D50, and it had a very useful feature that is absent from my D300, which was an infra-red sensor that could be used to release the shutter.  The infra-red shutter-release that you needed to use the feature didn’t come with the camera, but was reasonably cheap as well as being small and light, so I bought it and kept it in a little pouch that attached to the camera strap.  It was rare I used it, but for shots like this it proved quite useful.

The camera itself is sitting on a mini-tripod that I often bring travelling with me, though it struggles to support the weight of the D300 and any reasonably heavy lens.  I placed it on the ground with the 18-55mm lens at its widest, and tried to keep the composition central so that the auto focus would keep Aoife and I in focus.  In my left hand I am concealing the infra-red trigger which I then used to take the shot.

The white balance is off in this shot, giving the whole image an orange glow, but I haven’t adjusted it for two reasons.  Firstly, it was shot in JPEG, so there’s a limited amount of adjustment I can do anyway without degrading the image, and secondly I like the effect.

What I most like about this shot though is the rim lighting provided by the street light above and behind us.  It was largely good luck that we were able to keep that mostly behind our heads and avoid it confusing the camera’s exposure meter, and it helps give us definition against the dark background.  Without it, even if the camera exposed correctly for our faces, our heads would probably have blended into the night time sky in a not-very-aesthetic (unaesthetic? inaesthetic?) way.   The light also even gives nice edge definition to the guide book that Aoife is holding.

Meanwhile the ambient light from light sources in front of us is just allowing enough detail to be seen in our clothing and the bench that we were sitting on to complete the frame nicely.

You’d almost think when I took this shot that I knew about lighting – well I didn’t really.  But when I saw it I knew enough to put it on the wall as one of the favourite photos from our honeymoon – and probably also one of the few good shots featuring both of us.