Kimiko Yoshida is a brilliant photographer.
Her work to me is so breath taking and beautiful.
She mentions her process as taking away her ego in the photographs to create these interesting and alluring characters.

3 Simple Steps for portraiture for beginners.

Here are some steps to taking successful self portraits:
1: Vision: What do you want to create? What is the background? It could be a field, a roof top, a wall. What about the subject (you)? How did you want to style your self. Did you want to be you, or portray something that is not close to how you are in every day situations.

2: Gear: Work with what you have. If you don’t have lights than go with out doors lighting, or close to a sunny window. An option is to use white foam core or white Bristol board to bounce the sun light to yourself. A must is a tri-pod or something very sturdy like a table with books under it to balance your camera on. It needs to be level and stable. Before I had a tri-pod I would use a chair and find objects to level the camera. Make sure your camera has a self timer.

3: Once you have explored your clothing, makeup, location and you have your gear in place, it is time to model. Test your self timer to see how long you have before it takes a photograph. Also play with your exposure settings. If the “Manual” setting is too intimidating, try “Automatic” for now until you are ready to try something different. When posing try many different angles and movements. It’s best to look and preview the photograph to see what is working and what isn’t so you know how to go from there. TIP: Where ever the main light source is have your head looking up into it but have your eyes looking away in different directions.

A note on focusing. If you can get an object or a friend to be your stand in this will ensure that you are focused where you want to be. This is very important.