Graceful Whatever

Well, internet is down tonight, so I have to write this in Word and then post it when I can…

On a whim, I called up Michelle and asked if she wanted to do some shooting tonight. Of course she was all for it, so late in the evening her, Marissa and I went out to the DNR trails.

Original plan was to do some picture with a white dress and lush, green ferns. But then we forgot the dress, and the ferns weren’t so lush and green. Plan B was then to do some back lit shots in the fern and make silhouettes. But that failed too because the foliage bounced too much light around and just was not feeling it.

When all looked like it was not going to work, Michelle had the idea of going out to the road and doing something there. The wheels started working, and there was a plan! We trudged out of the wood to the fire road and started up again.

The plan for silhouettes was still the same; only this time Marissa threw bunches of debris in the air for some particular effects. Which she did an awesome job at, basically a pro assistant right off the bat. Even counted down for me.

So, how do you time air debris in the air with a dancer? Welllll you don’t really. Trial and air, and a bit of luck are about it. We had to shoot about 50 photos to get 4 good ones. Which is usually what the ratio is sadly. It was really hard to time the moves with the right about of stuffs in the air.

For the set up, I used my 70-300mm lens at 105mm, f4.5, 1/200, and ISO100. I had two strobes going at ½ power to backlight Michelle, who was about 15ft in front of them. They were pointed at her.

The set up for this type of shot isn’t terribly complicated or hard to do. It’s just the timing for these that gets tricky.

Also, editing. The first thing I did was converting to b/w and cropping down. Mostly, the crop was to straighten the photo. Then I upped the contrast, whites, and clarity, while lowering the blacks. This made a dark, dramatic, and very poppy image.

Finally, I did some weird stuff with the tone curve. I added red to the highlights, blue to the shadows, and green to the mid tones. This all makes a very off coloring, but I kind of like it.

And that’s about it!

See you tomorrow!