This is one of my favorite photographs from the Texas Renaissance Festival. When I look at it, I think that I am part of a conversation among old friends. it seems that natural.
I took several shots in which she was looking directly at the camera, but then she and Steve (my Val, Voice Activated Light) began to talk about Hurricane Ike and all the damage it caused in Galveston. She became totally engaged in their conversation. Her eyes showed more intensity as she looked directly at Steve and talked about some of the problems after the storm.
The background was very dark, so I had to dial my shutter speed down to 1/30 so that I could get a little ambient light into the scene. I knew that I would have a few hot spots in the background, but because they would be totally out of focus, I was not overly concerned. The Speedlight and the softbox did a great job of providing soft, even lighting on her face that completely fell-off before it hit the background. The VAL was about two feet from her and had dialed the Speedlight down to 1/32 power.
Camera settings: Nikon D3, 70-210 f/2.8 at 90mm, shot at ISO 200, f/6.7 and 1/30.
Post Processing:
Lightroom—tweak white balance, set white and black point, and added mid-tone contrast, cloning some small hot spots out of image, cropped to 11x14 format.
Photoshop—sharpened her face and hat using high pass filter at 2.8 pixels in hard light mode.
I am almost always troubled by portraits where the subject is not looking at the camera. But, I do like this one. I think that your back story helps me get over my normal idea that the person should be looking at the camera. All that said, she does have very nice eyes.
ReplyDeleteJeff
I like everything about this photo except for her hand and the pen. I would either clone or crop it out. It seems like you could crop the image in from the left side.
ReplyDeleteNice work.
Charlie
All of the images from the Texas Renaissance Festival are cropped to the same size (11x14). I really like that size for portraits. I am thinking about making them into a body of work, and that is gone to be one of the unifying aspects of the various photographs.
ReplyDeleteI must admit, since I use 11x14 so much for my portraits, I often find myself shooting to accommodate this size crop. Thanks for your comments.
Nice. Your description of being part of a conversation is appropriate. Need a little more written about the lighting on this one.
ReplyDeleteTim
Beautiful. You have given her a lot of dignity in this photo. She appears to be someone that you would want to have as a friend. Nice work. I look forward to seeing more of your images. Tom
ReplyDelete