4/366 Killing My Self-Portrait

Aaron DuRall has added a photo to the pool:

(PRESS L TO VIEW ON BLACK)

Ok, I have REALLY been wanting to do this shot for a little while. When I decided that I would try my hand at another 365 project because the first one failed, I just started penciling down ideas. I have a nice list compiled that I believe will keep me motivated and keep me fresh for a while. Of course, since this is such a long and demanding project, I am fairly certain there will be slow days and days where I want to rip my brain out due to lack of ideas. It's all good though! Nothing comes easy and a project like this shouldn't necessarily be a cakewalk.

Anyways, back to this shot. I have been thinking of locations and how I'd set this up. This is my second strobist shot and I think it came out really well. There are some inconsistencies, but they aren't so egregious that they irritate me, so that's awesome!

I spent a little bit thinking about the name, too. Wasn't sure what to call it, but then the title came to me. It's sorta a play on words. It can either be viewed as "Killing Myself Portrait" or 'Killing My Self-Portrait". I obviously opted for the latter of the two because I think it has a cooler implication and adds a little bit of dark humor, if you will.

My wife and I went to the old train station here in Joplin, the Union Depot. This place was, at one time, a really amazing little slab of Joplin. It's still cool, but for different reasons. I actually didn't want to do the shoot there because it is somewhat of a risky place to go as it is a place where a lot of bums have a tendency to stay and is supposed to be off limits from trespassing. There have actually been a couple stabbings there! Yikes! I did take my aluminum t-ball bat in case anything potentially bad presented itself. Luckily, not a soul was there, so it worked out!

We did rush this shot just because the location isn't far from the police station and they have a tendency to enforce the no trespassing rules on the lot due to all of the vandalism that has gone on there over the years.

The photo consists of three shots that were aligned and masked together in CS5. A HUGE thank you to my awesome wife, Whitney, for sitting in and letting me set my focus on her. She also tied me up and snapped the final shot after I was tied up. She's awesome.

I hope you like this shot as much as I do!

Shooting:
Canon 7D
Tokina 11-16mm 2.8 @ 4.0
Canon 430 EX ii camera right bare on ETTL

Editing:
Three photo blend
Layer masking
Creating smoke
Troy + Acid Wash (selective layers within each action)
Burning
Dodging
Cloning

Makeup & Blood:
Me! Crazy, right!?!?!