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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken at a local nature reserve/campground in my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Unfortunately, I don't get to travel often, so me and my girlfriend (model in picture) are always searching for the most interesting locations we can find around town.Time
This photo was taken during the hours of the day when light is probably most harsh. I'd say it was somewhere between noon and two o'clock. Fortunately for us, however, it was very overcast which really added to the dark and gloomy mood of the photo.Lighting
I think lighting is incredibly important. I'd challenge everybody to look at some of their favorite photographs, and I'm sure you would be hard pressed to ever find one without good lighting. That being said, though, I only use natural light and light sources I can find while out shooting. I really enjoy the challenge. Don't be discouraged if you don't have an expensive flash, there are always other ways to light a scene.Equipment
This was shot with my older crop-sensor camera, the Canon T3i while mounted on a tripod. The lens was a Canon EF-S 24mm f/2.8, also known as a pancake lens because of it's small and flat shape. I would highly recommend this lens for beginning photographers or anybody on a budget. Some of the best optics you can get for a lens that costs around $150, and the small size makes it extremely portable. Unfortunately it's an EF-S mount, so it will only work on crop sensor cameras.Inspiration
As much as I'd love to tell everybody that I had some interesting inspiration for the photo, it was really just a matter of me wanting to try my hand at a picture of levitation.Editing
Almost any picture I take is post-processed in Adobe Lightroom, this one included. Sometimes, though, I take to Photoshop when Lightroom doesn't quite fit all of my needs. In the case of this picture, Photoshop was needed. To get the levitating effect, we found a collection of wood stumps that were being used as seats along the trail we were shooting on. We pushed one of them to where we needed it and took two photos. One picture of just the background and trees, and one of the model laying on the stump in the foreground. Afterwords, I just photo-shopped the log out of the picture, added a shadow under the model, some fog, and changed the saturation to make it black and white.In my camera bag
I use different equipment than I had when I took this photo. I've since switched to full-frame with a Canon 6d camera body. As for lenses I carry my Canon 135mm f/2 (my personal favorite), Canon 35mm f/1.4, and Canon 24-105mm f/4. Aside from my camera body and lenses, I only ever carry extra batteries and memory cards.Feedback
My biggest advice for other photographers is to practice, practice, practice. After all, practice makes perfect. I know, I know, it's cliche, but it only became a cliche because it's so true. Almost everything I've learned as a photographer was from trial and error. Also, if you're going to invest in anything, make sure it's good glass. Much more important to image quality than a camera body is a good lens. However, that's not to say that buying an expensive lens will magically make your pictures better. It really comes down to the photographer and whether they know how to get the best results out of their camera and lens. I've taken some of my favorite pictures on $100 dollar lenses, and it's sometimes pretty difficult to tell the difference between those and my Canon "L" lenses.