A Tough Shot OR SOTC 70/365

I have mentioned before that portraiture is often a more challenging form of photography for me. I thoroughly enjoy portraiture--both shooting or just looking at the portraits of others--and my skill keeps improving. Still, it's not my truest niche, and I make a point not to shoot portraits for people I don't know well.

So when a gal from church asked me if I would do her engagement photos--at sunset--I knew I would need to practice first.

I do not have a lot of hands-on experience with off-camera flash and diffusers. I get the basic theory, but it's just not equipment I utilize very often. I needed to know how long it would take me to set up a shot, to move the equipment around from location to location, and how I'd need to adjust the settings as the sun continued to drop behind me. So I texted my best models and asked for help.

Very graciously, they joined me in the river valley, and thank goodness the weather has been so wonderful (sunny and 30C).

I shot for about 45 minutes at the location where I will be shooting for real next weekend. I was pleased to see that I was setting up the light fairly well most of the time. Some small touch ups here and there in Photoshop, as usual. The degree of necessary touch-ups has lessened over time, but nevertheless, I always expect to spend some time post-processing after a portrait shoot.

So I was quite pleasantly surprised when I looked more closely at this one image of my friend, C, and thought, "it's good!"* It's not my favourite of the bunch that came out of that session, but really only because she's not smiling as brightly in this particular shot. The colours are rich, the tone is warm, the composition is well put-together. And clearly, the lighting was set up appropriately.

It's good, it's good, it's good.




*A portrait critique would likely indicate that the dappled light on her arm and shirt should have been dealt with by using another diffuser, but it's far from distracting enough to be problematic.