IMG_1486_Wood Elf with Butterfly
Feb, 2015Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
A state park up in Malibu, California. We're in a serious drought, so a lot of the landscape is dry, but the native plants stay relatively green most of the year. This was taken in May of last year, so we still had more green than stick-brown thanks to the little rain that had fallen during the "rainy" season.Time
It was late morning, but we were in the shade so just got some lovely, filtered light. I had scoped out the location about a week before, so I knew where I wanted to shoot, and I knew the kind of light I would have. Malibu can be hot and almost brutally hot, or it can be overcast and misty. I had been hoping for misty, but we got dry and hot, so I had to create the misty background in post-processing.Lighting
The lighting was challenging, because it was dappled sunlight. On the one hand, it was critical to get the backlit effect on her dress, especially down around her knees and ankles. On the other hand, I did not want to blow out the highlights on her hair. I was going for the organic impact, and so did not want to use a flash. So I bracketed my shots, taking the darkest exposure for the highlights of her hair, and the lightest for her dress. The rest of the scene was selected from the three exposures.Equipment
This was shot with a Canon 7D, EF50mm f/1.4 USM lens, ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/160 sec handheld. I have a lot of respect for people who use tripods on a regular basis, but my personal style involves a lot of jockeying around and multiple shots to get the exact image I'm going for, so I seldom use a tripod or reflectors, etc. for portraits. My style is all about the expression and capturing the moment, so I need the flexibility of movement and positioning to achieve the images I'm going after.Inspiration
My model Christa was definitely a major inspiration. I had seen her in a Renaissance Faire costume as an elf, and I knew she would be fabulous as an elf in a forest setting. I also had a large number of butterfly closeups, and so as soon as I thought of Christa in the forest I knew I wanted her to be holding a butterfly as if it was a precious gem. It's funny, because in the process of posing her for this image, we had a bit of miscommunication at first, and we actually got a number of other shots which I used in other composites which worked quite well. But I made sure that I did not get side-tracked, so I got the ones I needed for this shot as well.Editing
Oh yes, a great deal of post-processing! Photoshop is my friend. First, I combined the bracketed images into one that gave me the detail in her hair with the back-lit dress. This also took a number of exposure, brightness, and (de)saturation layers to get the look I wanted. Then I ran it through Imagenomic filters twice. Christa is a gorgeous woman of retirement age. This particular image depended on an ethereal, even inhuman perfection, which the Imagenomic filters can provide. I spent a lot of trying different blend modes with her dress, finally settling on a combination of about four. The background mist was courtesy of a Nik filter, again with a combination of blend modes to get just the right feel. I had to clone in her toes on one foot and the bottom of the image because I shot a little too tight. Fortunately, I zoomed out in the next set of shots so had the raw material for this image, which had better expression and body language. The butterfly is actually a composite of three different butterflies (darn things just won't hold still!), and was added last. I used an Alienskin filter on the final image.In my camera bag
Until recently, I would have only my Canon 7D, either my 50 mm lens or my 70-200 mm L series lens, and maybe a flash and/or reflectors. I don't like changing lenses; it interrupts my flow. I recently bought a Nikon D810 with a 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR Lens and just love the incredible resolution and tonal range. Don't ask me which of my babies I love the best - I really could not choose.Feedback
I think the key is to have a good idea of where you want to go, but to be open to what you find during experimentation during post-processing. I probably created twenty versions of this with different blend modes and filters. Most of them I deleted, even though I loved a few at first. It's good to let images sit a while out of view and then come back to them. Sometimes an image looks striking and appealing just because it's different from what you started with. A little time gives you perspective on whether it's just different, or actually good.
