My Self-Portrait for @photogames

Thanks @photogames for getting me out of the house today! I love that this week's games included a photography assignment and I had a lot of fun creating my picture. It's really easy for me to be super lazy, especially on a Saturday, so I was glad to have a little extra motivation to get out and take some pictures!

For my self portrait I had considered messing around with some indoor flash and trying to create some moody lighting a-la @vmoldo (especially since that's something I'm really bad at), but I felt like getting outside and I decided that would be a more accurate self-portrait anyways!

Today (after a pancake breakfast and a tasty cup of fresh coffee) I headed over to Indian Run Falls which is about 20 minutes from my apartment. My idea was to take a picture of myself using a long exposure so that the falls would be smooth and I would be relatively sharp and in focus. I tried several different setups and compositions, but this is what I ended up liking the best. Turns out it's really freakin' hard to hold still for 4 seconds! I think I turned out reasonable sharp considering the shutter speed in this shot, but I have a lot of other pictures where I'm fuzzy or have a little trail showing where my body has moved. I used a 10 second timer to take this shot and barely had time to press the shutter-release then scramble into place with that amount of time.

I chose this setting and setup because I love nature and definitely feel most alive when I'm outdoors. I also enjoy finding beauty in settings that people often might not look for it. You wouldn't know it just looking at it, but this falls is in the middle of Dublin, OH and at the top of the gully there are lots of buildings within a couple hundred feet. Today was actually the first time that I'd gone to these falls, and now that I know how pretty they are I feel pretty dumb for not having been there before!

Let me know what you think!

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