Penelope
Sep, 2015Views
876
Likes
Awards
Spring Selection Award
Top Choice
Superb Composition
Peer Award
Outstanding Creativity
Absolute Masterpiece
Magnificent Capture
All Star
Superior Skill
Top Ranks
Top 20 rankTop 20 rank week 1
Top 20 rankTop 20 rank week 1
Top 20 rank
Categories
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Discover more photos See all
Behind The Lens
Location
I captured this picture in a public park nearby this sweet little girls home. We wanted her in crawling through tall grass but found that the short grass made a better picture.Time
Since we had to work around eating and nap times we ended up shooting in the mid-afternoon. The tall trees provided enough shade and dappled light to really get some great shots without the heavy shadows you can get in direct afternoon sun.Lighting
This was shot in the shade of a large tree, on a bright sunny day with a low powered, snootted flash to add a little highlight to the face and eyes.Equipment
Nikon D800 with an 85mm f1.8 lens set to f2.2. The flash was off camera and held slightly up and to the right of the camera in my left hand while shooting with my right, laying on the ground. I really love the effect of the large aperture on the background and making the girl the only subject in the photo.Inspiration
I appreciate all those beautiful pictures of sleeping babies wrapped in blankets or hugging footballs, teddy bears and the like. For me, images that help capture personality are always the best and the motivation for this pictue was to show this little girl's near perfect demeanor. For nearly an hour she never appeared to be tired, upset or rather be doing anything else other than smiling for the camera.Editing
Post processing on this was fairly straight forward and done in Lightroom 5. I added a little contrast and desaturated the color, finished with a very subtle vignette in the corners just to make the girl pop out a little more.In my camera bag
Since I'm usually a people/portrait photographer, I like a lot of long, fast lens. For weddings, for example, I carry two camera bodies a Nikon D7000 and a D800. I usually have a Tameron 24-70mm f2.8, a Nikon 70-200 f2.8 and two prime lenses, a Nikon 50mm f1.8, and a Nikon 85mm f1.8. Since I like to make my own atmosphere with lighting, I carry three speedlights with different modifiers. Of course, when I'm in the studio my options are only limited by what I can get my hands on!Feedback
The best advice I've every gotten, (and the best that I can give) is practice, practice, practice and explore on your own enough times that it's second nature when you have to do it for real! The doing it over and over again will do a couple of things, you'll learn a lot of ways that it will not produce the look that you want and help you discover looks that you might not have imagined.
