Coming out of the Shadows
A young, beautiful girl coming out of the shadows
A young, beautiful girl coming out of the shadows
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Sep, 2014Views
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Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Behind The Lens
Location
This portrait was actually more of a grab shot. The portrait is of my daughter Kelly and she was about to head out for rock climbing practice (she's on a competitive rock climbing team) when she came by my studio/office to hear if I could make her portrait on her way out. It was totally unplanned and while I am used to quite elaborate studio or location lighting setups, this was shot using only daylight streaming in from a window. The shoot was probably no more than five minutes from start to finish, showing that sometimes simplicity and inspiration is all you need to make a classic portrait.Time
It was about 4:30 in the afternoon.Lighting
Since I didn't have much time and while I love studio lighting setups to create moods and tell stories, there simply was no time for that. I posed Kelly next to the window and it starts by posing her from the bottom/feet to the top/head. It's a very classic pose and I only adjusted it so I would get the right amount of spillover from her right side face to her left, and particularly also so her left eye would be visible.Equipment
This was shot with a Nikon D810 and a Nikkor 85mm f/1.4G lens, handheld at 1/160s at f/2.8 and ISO 1000.Inspiration
It was a spur of the moment decision and the way my daughter was made up and dressed, it inspired me to do something really classic and timeless.Editing
The image was post-processed in Lightroom 5.6 with the NIK Silver Efex Pro 2 plugin for black-and-white conversion. I adjusted for white and black points and carefully used a curve to get the right glow on the right, bright side of her face without blowing out anything. I wanted to fine tune the light hitting her left eye and show enough detail in the shadows so they were not completely blocked out. I really wanted to portrait to look very natural and classic.In my camera bag
I shoot a lot of portraits, in studio but also environmental portraits. For that work my go-to combination is a Nikon D810 with a Nikkor 85mm f/1.4G lens. I also sometimes use Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G and Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 G VRII lenses. Sometimes I use neutral density filters to open up the lens more, to at least f/4 and often more open, for aa very shallow depth of field and creamy bokeh.Feedback
I think that while it's very nice to use elaborate studio equipment, and I have tons of Profoto gear and modifiers, it's really rewarding to go back to basics and shoot something in a minimalistic way using just ambient light.
