Gentle Touch

Unfortunately I have not taken any decent portraits of my father to post on this Father's Day, but I do hope to remedy that soon. This image is my father's hand resting gently on my mother's. I have been attempting to photograph my mother's hands doing all the special and nuturing things she does but it has been a very challenging project for various reasons from poor lighting to cluttered backgrounds to the activity (or my capture of it) just not conveying the message I want it to. This time I made several "snoots" for my speedlight and was much happier with how this medium length snoot makes the light fall on their hands but not on their arms and legs. My mother was dressed in black and my father had on jeans and a dark plaid shirt and I think I had a reflector on camera right to bounce some of the light from the flash that was to my left back on their hands to fill in some of the shadows.

Camera info: Nikon D200, 50mm 1.8 lens at 2.2 and 1/60th, speedlight with snoot, reflector

Post processing: duplicated background in softlight at 37% opacity, dodged and burned with a softlight brush on a new layer to lighten the hands and darken the background, black and white adjustment layer, Kubota modern warm and deep black and white layer, global sharpening with the Edge, Curves for contrast and Levels to brighten a little more.