Spring Beauty
Sep, 2017Views
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daniellebalderston
August 06, 2018
Her dress looks like a petal from a flower! I love it! Nice shot!
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Behind The Lens
Location
This image was taken in the city of Chisinau in the country of Moldova. It is a small country between Romania and Ukraine. We had ventured into an old park of an old hospital grounds that featured formal gardens at one time. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the park gardens and park have grown into ruins around the hospital complex.Time
This was early afternoon, approximately 1-2pm. It was a beautiful spring day with fresh new flowers and greenery everywhere.Lighting
This particular lighting was created by cascading sun light coming through the leaves and branches of trees above. This little cove caught my eye as we walked down many paths that were grown in and unkempt. These flowers matched the dress perfectly and the trickles of the sunlight on the dress made it particularly interesting. The flowers also complimented the beaded hairpiece that was woven into Vladlena's hair.Equipment
This was shot with my Nikon D810, using a Nikon 24-70mm 2.8f lens @35mm, ISO 200, 1/200, no flash.Inspiration
This was a shoot for a bridal shop in Chisinau that specializes in custom made bridal gowns, evening gowns, and custom made dresses of all kinds. The model, Vladlena, is also a professional pianist with a warm, sweet heart. She is very kind, elegant, and has a certain poise about her that can be captured in almost any direction and shot. So she was as much a part of the inspiration for the image as the dress and surroundings themselves.Editing
The post processing involved color saturation, dodge and burning, PS. Much of the darker parts of the image were lightened, while the highlights of the image were brightened in order to exemplify their presence. Balancing out the dark and highlighted parts took many attempts in Camera Raw to perfect the outcome of giving it a "soft feel" to the image, yet with contrasting details, toning, and style to give it a more rich, almost marble look. This classic style was inspired by the model herself and the dress while I was editing. Sometimes you don't know what you are going to come up with in post processing until you start getting into it and "feeling" the image. I like to take my time with post in some of my creations in order to give the image not just a look, but also a mood and feel, something more three dimensional that you can almost reach out and touch. Not all images get as much attention as ones like this one, because the tasks involved to take it from a photograph to fine art can be time consuming. You have to choose the right images that you feel will be worth the time and effort.In my camera bag
Nikon D810 with 24-70mm 2.8f lens attached, 17-35mm 2.8f, 50mm 1.4f lenses, spare batteries, power brick, lens clothes, lens brush, plastic bags to cover everything if it starts to rain.Feedback
These kinds of shots are somewhat difficult to balance out the difference between the dark shadows and bright highlights losing detail when not using flash. If you use a flash, you will ruing the intimacy of the image by filling too much shadow, and over blowing the highlights. With the dress already being white, your highlights will tend to be overexposed. My solution in these situations is to set my camera exposure for the highlights to make sure they are not over exposed. The darker shadows I adjust later in PS in Camera Raw to lighten the details in the darker parts of the image. If the balance is still off, you can use the local tool in Camera Raw to light or darken parts of the image you prefer to either balance it out to your liking, or to create more contrast. With this image, the balancing act left the image a bit bland, so I added vignetting in order to maintain the intimacy and mood of the image.
