Lisa
Oct, 2016Views
1439
Likes
Awards
Chatter Award
Zenith Award
Top Shot Award 22
Legendary Award
Hero Award
Member Selection Award
Peer Award
Absolute Masterpiece
Outstanding Creativity
Top Choice
Superb Composition
Superior Skill
Emotions
Impressed
Top Ranks
Top 10 rankTop 10 rank week 1
Top 10 rankTop 10 rank week 1
Top 10 rank
Categories
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Discover more photos See all
Behind The Lens
Location
In high school and college, I used to love to drive the back roads of Missouri, and I would often find some of the most interesting places. This is one such place. At the time, 2007, this property near Augusta Missouri had been abandoned for years that I knew of, and myself, my girlfriend, another photographer, and some makeup artists decided we wanted to do a creative shoot - two retro/rockabilly type looks and a 1980's Bauhaus goth girl sort of look. The place wasn't boarded up so we wandered in and this is one of the few incredible shots I got. Unfortunately it's also one of the only surviving images after a computer died and I was unable to recover everything.Time
It had to have been late morning or early afternoon. I say we got started around 11am and this was the first look we did.Lighting
We used the already warm tones of the room on a bright sunny day to shoot this completely natural at a 1600 ISO. It was a bright sunny day, almost too harsh to shoot outside in the sun, but the place had no electricity, we had no idea what to expect, so we made do with what was available to us to use.Equipment
Natural lighting and a Canon 20D. I used an 18 to 125mm zoom at approximately 26mm f/4 for 1/30th at ISO 1600.Inspiration
Love? I was stupid for this woman and wanted to take the most incredible photos of her. We would always just say "hey, let's go try this!" Sometimes it worked, other times it didn't, but I almost always had something I felt was worthwhile whenever we shot together.Editing
Absolutely! I never share an image without some sort of color balancing, toning, or correction. In this image I did boost the contrast, I prefer images to be a bit punchier, and I boosted the warm tones. The editing was done so long ago and I don't have the raw file anymore due to a computer failure, so I can't be more precise, but I know that I altered the color temperature and then adjusted the red and orange tones through Adobe Camera Raw. I also softened the image a tad. I wanted to give a warm nostalgic feeling.In my camera bag
I'm partial to carrying zoom lenses. These days I have a Tamron 18-400mm that I absolutely love, and for those times I need a little wider angle a 10-20mm Sigma that I keep in my bag. I travel, hike, and shoot on location most of the time, and for being on budget, these two lenses have served me incredibly well. If I'm shooting events I have a Canon EX580 flash and a Custom Brackets flash bracket setup as well, and for my light painting and night photography, I have a Neweer RF remote shutter that works just fine for me and a Pluto trigger for storms.Feedback
Practice practice practice. There was a well built rapport between the model and I, and that's important when you shoot on a whim like we did - not knowing exactly what we were walking into. That ability to work well together. But also, just basics of understanding exposures. I learned to photograph on film with the zone system. I live by my meter and I know what my limits are in being able to push my equipment. If you chip your shots a lot, you're always going to be looking at the back of your camera and trusting a screen that isn't accurate instead of understanding what is actually going on.
