Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Still Lauren


But really the last one.  This was actually one of the first ones we shot, along the railroad tracks.  We really wanted to have the tracks in the compositions too, but they were in full sun and we never made it back there later. I shot through some branches and weeds and really should have used an even wider aperture to blur the branches in the background more but I was going for the contrast of texture and pattern versus her smooth unblemished skin and satin dress.  The background darkened nicely when I used an action by Kubota called Creamsickle that I often use at a low opacity for smoothing skin and here I left it full strength on the background and masked it back some off of her face and skin as she really doesn't need it.  Then I added a new layer in overlay and used a low-opacity soft black brush to darken the branches and tree trunks immediately behind her head.  Luckily we never saw the reported snakes...
Nikon D200, 50mm 1.8 lens at f3.2 and 1/2500th.  Flash in a softbox from camera left.

2 comments:

  1. Like the shot except for the branches in front. They just don't seem to add anything for me. Outside of that I like the exposure and setting you shot this in.

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  2. I am with Doug, I think the branches distract from the main subject. Good pose and good use of a unusual setting for this type of shot.

    Is your shutter speed correct--1/2500th?

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