Having started to work at a new employer, I was ask to optionally provide a profile picture for my personal intranet page. I wasn't happy with my previous self portrait anymore at all, so I quickly shot a new one! I'm experienced with neither portrait work nor portrait post-processing, but I somehow like this image — at least (a lot) more than my previous attempt! The entire setup and idea came up very spontaneously: the background is a huge towel hung over my armchair and lit by a small desk light. I was sitting on the floor being lit by an "Ikea Orgel" placed on the floor about 50cm in front of me. I definitely would have wanted to have this image at ISO100, but since my pose was rather uncomfortable I somehow had to keep the shutter speed low! The picture isn't 100% sharp, but I (still) do not own a remote control, and yeah: manual pre-focussing sucks!

Well, for post-processing I somehow stuck to what I do most of the time: vignetting and some contrast stuff. I initially wanted to have some sort of blur or monocle effect, but in the end I ended up at putting lots and lots of sharpness! The monochrome conversion itself is done using the channel mixer, taking lots of red and almost no blue levels (green being something in between)...

^{Image added on Wed, April 18th 2012, 7:33PM}

Camera Model:		Canon EOS 30D
Lens:		Sigma AF 150mm 2.8 EX DG APO HSM IF Macro
Add. Equipment:		Tripod
Focal Length:		150mm (x1.6 = 240mm)
Shutter Speed:		1/3s
Aperture:		f/4
ISO Speed:		ISO400
Date & Time:		Tue, April 10th 2012, 10:50PM