KrisL
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Behind The Lens
Location
A few years ago I've met a group of fantastic people who love photography, organize meetings and workshops. In the fall of 2015, I attended in one of such events in manor house in Janowice/Poland. Thanks to manor house owners who would like to keep XIX century style, atmosphere at this manor house is quite unique. And this picture I captured on this event in one of the climatic interiors, equipped with old furnitures, paintings and piano.Time
We had two session: one in the morning and the second after lunch. This picture has been captured late afternoon, about 5:00 PM. Day was quite sunny with a small clouds on the sky.Lighting
As I mentioned, picture has been captured inside of the manor house, and I used natural lighting only. Behind me there were few big windows and it was the only light used for this shot. The model and the piano was quite close to windows, so sunlight was enough to light foreground. And as you can see rest of interior is rather dark, because there were no additional light inside. Of course I had to use longer exposure time and speed ISO 800, which allowed me to get expected exposure.Equipment
This was shot on a Pentax K-3, with a standard Pentax-DA 18-55mm lens. I set lowest possible aperture for this lens (f/4.0) and aperture priority mode settings in the camera. Because of high contrast of the scene and good light on the foreground, additionally i decreased exposure with -1.5EV.Inspiration
We've been in old manor house with the styled interiors. Eve, the model was dressed with white classic dress delivered by the designer who cooperated with us. When I saw a piano with old classic chair and the soft light available in this room, the first idea was to use all these available details and compose them together. I submitted this picture to the challenge "Show mood in your creations", because in my opinion all these details showed mood how I saw and felt during this session.Editing
As you can see, I choose the B&W version. When I began my adventure with a photography long time ago, I did analog B&W pictures only. So for the mood which has been created by old interior and Eve's dress, B&W was the best choice in my opinion. The only post-processing I did was correction of light and contrast, and improving of lights and shadows to keep correct histogram, light foreground and a little darker background. All these corrections has been made with Adobe Lightroom on a RAW file from my camera.In my camera bag
First of course I pack my Pentax cameras - I use two models: K-3 and a little older K-5. Depending on what type of picture I plan to capture, I usually pack: Tamron 2,8/90mm macro lens, which is also good for sharp portraits with nice bokeh, Pentax DA 12-24 mm f/4 ED AL IF which I use for landscapes, Pentax smc DA 55-300 mm f/4.0-5.8 ED for the longer distances, and - what could be interesting - always I pack cheapest, standard Pentax DA 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 AL II. When capturing landscapes I almost always use Cokin filers set (mostly two graduated - soft and hard, and polarizing circular). Of course for this picture no filter has been used.Feedback
Because it was my third time when I worked with models, mostly in interiors - I captured mostly landscapes and nature before - I was afraid about about low light conditions. When shooting landscapes I use ISO speed at maximum 200 value. In my opinion to avoid noise on your picture better is to use tripod and longer exposure time than high ISO. In the interiors with natural light only I used ISO even up to 3200 and the results were quite satisfied. If you would like to capture picture like this, I think you should always remeber about correct aperture and expected depth of field - keep sharp these elements or details which you want to show to people. If it's not the planned effect, remember to avoid very high contrast when you have direct sunlight throw the window and deep shadows in your room. And don't be afraid about higher ISO speed.