Texas Renaissance Festival #3—A Fairy’s Wings

After taking the photograph of the lady selling drinks, I turned and saw this bright translucence of color—two ladies wearing some fairy wings. My immediate reaction was: “How would I photograph that much variation in light and still have a portrait of her?” The back lighting that made her wings so dynamic also put her face in deep shadows.

I wanted to push her fairy wings nearly to point of “blowing out” but still retain all the glow and colors. My approach was quite simple. I got an overall reading of the scene and took a test shot. I then dialed the exposure down 1 1/2 f-stop to an exposure of f/5.6 at 1/180 second so that I would make sure the wings did not blow-out. I then set my flash power to properly expose her face at my camera exposure setting. Since I wanted the light on her face to be very soft, Steve placed the flash about two feet and set it at 1/32 power.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, 70-210 f/2.8 at 150mm, shot at ISO 200, f/5.6 and 1/180.

Post Processing: Lightroom—tweak white balance, set white and black point, and added mid-tone contrast, cloning some small spots out of image, adjusting color saturation of her hat and cape