flickr Addiction - Day 70 of 365

I was scrambling for a shot tonight and nothing was working out. As I was thinking, I caught myself looking at my phone at flickr to see what was going on. So, I decided to do a "self-portrait" of what I was up to at the time in order to get something photographed before midnight. I guess some days are just like that when you're doing a Project 365. This one isn't my favorite, but it definitely shows a piece of my day.

This shot actually may be more interesting from a technical standpoint than it is visually. My setup/thought process was as follows: (1) Light the phone/hand - I setup an SB-600 through a lightbox camera left and above (close in for a big, soft light source). I had to make sure to hold the phone in a way that the screen didn't reflect the light back at the camera. Once I had that the way I wanted it, I moved on to the background. (2) I setup the pieces of crumpled tinfoil from the other night in the background and aimed a green gelled SB-600 at the tinfoil. I adjusted the light until I liked the balance between the hand/phone and background. I also tweaked with the aperture to adjust the size of the bokeh (which forced me to adjust both flashes in equal proportions to the aperture adjustments). (3) Once the "strobed" portions of the scene were set, I worked on getting the screen of the iphone to photograph properly. I did this by adjusting the shutter speed -- which does not affect your "strobed" portions of the scene. Basically, I slowed down the shutter speed until it was open long enough to let the light from the screen "burn in" and balance with the flashes. I was working in a dark room, so ambient was not a factor. There you have it. Also, I used auto-focus, which was easy here because the screen was the only light, so the autofocus saw only screen light and focused on it.