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Hey friends! Today I actually have a photoshoot to share with you! I haven’t taken any self-portraits I think since the summer of last year. So summer of 2021, I think was the last time I took self-portraits, like, with my actual camera, on purpose that’s more than just like a whim of like, let me take a couple selfies with my cell phone. I’m not really counting those for what I’m talking about. Sorry. I’m itching, my tattoo. Well, the saniderm that’s on it right now.

Okay, so have a photo shoot to share with you. I’m pretty excited it was the first time I played with these new lights that I got. They’re super fancy. They’re actually not but I think they’re fancy and I’m very excited about them. So I’ll tell you about the photoshoot that I did. I was feeling spicy and It was like 11:30 at night. So it was dark. Right now I’m using sunlight because my room is like, mostly windows. So it was much darker than this. It was dark outside. Because it was night time, like 11:30 at night and I have these new lights that I wanted to experiment with. So I was like, I feel like taking self portraits so why not use my new fancy lights?

So I took these photos just a couple days ago, but I think I’ve actually going to share this video in a couple weeks. So by the time you see this I took them a couple weeks ago, but here we are. I’m really excited. I had fun taking them. I’m trying to think if there’s any other, like, backstory information I should tell you. I took them right here, as you will see, very soon, but I was just like on my bed for these. I redid my photo wall so there’s more space. I don’t have to worry about accidentally knocking one, because this one was lower before and I was always like accidentally touching it and like, making it like off balance. So I don’t have to worry about that as much now because I redid my photo wall. It’s nice and curved like this. I really like it.

So I took the photos here and when I did, it was dark outside and I just used these two tiny LED lights. They’re tiny, aren’t they? They’re so cute. So these are called Litratorches. These are two different like generations of them. I think this one’s the newer one, but they’re super cool. I got them at a discounted price because they were used, at my favorite camera store, Biggs Camera in Charlotte. They’ve been locally owned since… it’s been over 60 years now, 60 or 65 years. I love them. I help out, like I used to work there full-time and I just kind of go in to help occasionally.

But back to the story of these photos, before I get too distracted. These Litratorches are really cool. They’re LED they’re super bright. They have a little button on the top to turn them on. This one has a little like silicone protector case thing on it. I don’t know if you can see but yeah, so there’s a little button on top turn it on, that’s the only button on it. On the back of it there’s a place for you can turn like I think it’s a quarter twenty tripod screw on the back of both of them. 

And then they have a magnet inside of them, so there’s something metal you can just like, like stick it onto a metal thing and it’ll stay there because it’s magnetic. I don’t have anything metal here to show you, but it works. That’s pretty cool. They’re really bright. They actually have two quarter twenty threads. So there’s one on the back and one on the bottom. So there’s two of them depending on how you want to mount it and what kind of like tripod or thing that you have to mount them on. If you want to mount them, I was lazy. I just have to. I just laid them on the bed, so you can’t see it in the screen right now, but I had one laid down on the bed over here and the other laid down on the bed over here. And one cool thing that I really like about these is you can get little tiny gels to go with them. So there are these things that come with it. It’s just like a little plastic Square. I love this tiny case. Look how tiny and cute! So tiny, so these are the gels. Some of them are not ones that originally came with it. Since this was used somebody had these other ones that are like really thin and not actually the ones that are supposed to be with it. But I kind of like the color of them because they’re like a really warm kind of orangey color and you can stack them to make them darker, but I can tell that they’re not the best material because some of them are a little melty from being like somebody using them on the Litratorch for too long, but these are the thicker ones. They’re like green, yellow, blue and red. I used a red one. And I think I used one of these like orangey ones for my colors. So it’s really easy. You have this little square thing and the light. And you put this in the little square and then you put this in front of the light, snap it on. Oh it’s not fitting hold on. And then you have a colored light, so I’m gonna turn it on. I’m gonna not point it at you. 

That’s the lowest setting and it has a color filter on the front. So they’re pretty bright. I’m gonna make it brighter, brighter. And then as a flashing one, but I’m not going to do that in case somebody has a problem with flashing but you press and hold to turn it off and that’s it. It’s super easy. And super awesome. And you can put different colors on them and they’re really great and I love them. And I’m really excited and they’re really tiny so they’re easy to travel with, and you just like charge it with little like a little, like tiny USB cord kind of thing and it’s super great. I love them and I’m excited. They also like, if you can buy them with a little, a little diffuser to put on it, to diffuse the light if you wanted to like to make it real soft. I just I’m happy. This is a really good buy in my opinion.

So this is the first time I was experimenting with these little lights and since I didn’t have them on like a tripod or anything and I just put them on the bed with me. The light was coming from below and pointing up towards me because I was like here and the lights were here and here, and in some of the images that looked cool. And in other images, I wish the light was higher up like this height like maybe my face height or maybe like chest height and I think the lighting would have been better if they were a little bit higher, but it was like midnight and I don’t want to figure out how to get a bunch of tripods and stuff over here to put the lights in a better place and I still really like the way the photos turned out. So, I think it was, I think it turned out really great. Even if I wasn’t 100% happy with the light for the whole set, I still think they look really cool. And I had fun making them. So that’s all that really matters. Right? I hope you like the photos. I hope you enjoy my little behind the scenes of what I did to make them. If you liked those that might do something like this again because this was kinda fun.

I used to take behind the scenes video of my shoots and maybe I’m thinking, I might take some behind the scenes video next time because I kind of miss having that, and that’s a kind of nice thing to have to be able to look back at and actually watch a photoshoot happen. Yeah, that’s kind of fun. So I’m gonna try to remember to do that next time. It’s not always easy because I’ll need like my phone and my camera to do it. If I’m going to take photos and video same time. 

Yeah, I hope you like these photos. I had fun making them. I felt spicy, can you tell? I was listening to good music too, and that helped me like get into the groove. So also I’m really proud of myself. I usually don’t even look at my photos for like a month after I take them. And then it takes me even longer to actually put them on SmugMug for y’all to see them. But in this case, I looked at them and uploaded them within like a week of taking them so I’m pretty proud of myself that I’m actually like staying ahead of the curve so don’t get behind. Yeah. I hope you like these photos and enjoy my little behind the scenes how I made them. I hope you have a wonderful day and I’ll see you soon! Bye!

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