Cramping my style

Blip tells me that this is my 1,500th entry.  I had originally intended to take a wide-angle shot outside today in celebration but the weather here has been truly inclement courtesy of Storm Erik.  If it really did rain cats and dogs, we would be up to our necks in the things.

So instead I decided on this tightly framed self portrait of my taking a photo of me taking a photo.  

I started by roughly sketching what I was hoping to achieve, and worked out where I would need to place flashes and reflectors to get the lighting to work.  Then, with a tape measures and the tripod I set the camera up on the landing upstairs looking downwards, with the intention that during the 10 second countdown I would race down to stand on the stairs to stare back up at it.  Getting the focus correct involved my first gaffer taping rulers to the downstairs ceiling above the relevant step at head height, to provide me with something to test shoot.

Cathy thinks that my faffing around is all very amusing, but I'm quite pleased with the end result.  The framing and composition is pretty much how I had intended it to turn out.  Not so shabby when you are both photographer and model - and something that I wouldn't have had a clue on how to achieve back at the start of my blipping days.  :-)