Portraits are hard. I was lucky enough to get some practice on Don, but if I had some stranger in a chair who wanted their pictures, I think it would have been crazy stressful. As it was, I was improvising with lights (and broke one bulb during set-up) and balancing cords on chairs... it was funny because he was there as a favor and didn't need pictures, having just been to a celebrity photo shoot for Mr. Sister earlier in the day. So I took a few pics of him, and chose a small number that I liked, and was prepared to submit them as homework.

Class night came, and the teacher got violently ill, and that's all I'll say about that.

So I wanted to do more this week, and see what I could work out now that I bought some halogen lights to make things less jerry-rigged and less breakable. But I couldn't bear the thought of strangers yet, so I tried shooting myself. It didn't work well. Even with the timer, the camera metered on the dark background before I jumped in with my white outfit (heh) and so most came out overexposed. I'm playing with the white balance to see what works best with the halogen... it's all very complicated. And I'm enjoying the practice. I just wish I had a mummy or a mannequin or something to shoot so I wasn't always begging my friends to be my subjects.