D7X_0433c
Feb, 2016Views
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NatureLoverJJWal
April 19, 2017
Perfect and dramatic silhouettes. The woman's body is really nice for silhouettes because of the curves. Congratulations on your award!
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
This was taken in my town on top of an artificial mountain from the coalmines (only 155m high, but the surrounding is completely flat as far as you can see).Time
Made at sunset. Sunrise was around 6am, a bit too early for most people to actively dance and jump around for a photoshoot ;)Lighting
I wanted a silhouette picture with a strong background, so the sun in the back, blocked by the models, and the clouds pretty much do most of the work allready. No flash or reflectors needed in this case. Always use manual settings offcourse, the camera autopilot rarely sees what you see.Equipment
I used a Nikon D7000 with a secondhand tamron 70-300. You don't need the best and most expensive gear to get a good picture that will be noticed. Just learn to use what you have to the fullest. I believe that if you buy the best and most expensive gear right away, you might skip a few necessary creative ideas that you would have had with cheaper gear. I often notice people tend to be "lazy" with their more expensive gear.Inspiration
The ballerina wanted some pictures, and I thought a silhouette with a sunset in the background from the top of my favorite mountain would be nice in this case because it would emphasize her postures more.Editing
Basic lightroom editing. I like to come in camera as close as possible to what I want in the endresult and use lightroom and photoshop to enhance what is allready there. If you need them to fix an image, you aren't doing it right. You can't get to a great image by fixing a bad one, a lesson I learned over time myself by improving and eventually making better images.In my camera bag
Always my awesome nikon D7000. I worked with several other nikons, but the D7000 simply is just right for my needs. A sigma 17-50 on the body, and depending on the shoot I have either a sigma 8-16 or a tamron 70-300 in the bag. I always carry a gorillapod. These things are great to put a flash (or camera) where-ever you want, even hanging from a tree or a nail in a wall (though tricky, be carefull). A single nikon SB700 flash with 3 sets of batteries (you don't want to run out of batteries during a shoot) and if the shoot requires it, also a cheap meike MK910 (not the best there is, but it does the trick for little money). Both with triggers to use them off camera. I rarely use filters, but I do have polarisation filters and several ND's for most of my lenses. It might seem strange, but I also bring a shockproof underwater pocketcamera along. You usually don't want to put a dslr in the water ;) (and it has an extra SD-card just in case you need one for the dslr)Feedback
Never hold back your "crazy" ideas just because they might seem crazy or difficult. For this shoot I lay down in a bed of nettles simply because I believed that that very spot would give me the best shot of the scene through the long grass. It turned out to be the best shot in the series. Even if it would not have worked out, at least I tried. Sure, it might be a miss sometimes, but chances are good that it will be "different". (And yes, the nettles did hurt, but I started really feeling them after the shoot was done. It was worth it.)
