Daily Photo – Steph in Yellow and Green…
The Daily Photo series focuses on the two or three key creative choices, in terms of composition and processing, that go into creating an image. Specific technical details about the shot have been left out — you won’t hear me talking about tone curve adjustments and whatnot unless it was a key component of the end result.
…although depending on your monitor, that might be orange and blue.
Exposure
- Shutter: 1/400
- Aperture: f/1.4
- ISO: 400
- Camera: Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III
- Lens: Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM
Composition and Processing
- This shot happened on the tail end of a wardrobe change, during a shoot with Stephanie, Dagny and Janus about a week ago. Steph had just finished changing and was putting on some earrings; I noticed the background light and snapped a couple shots. Based on that, we then recomposed the “candid” shot, first by having her pretend to change her left earring instead (her hair fell better on that side due to the location of the part), and to recompose horizontally instead of vertically.
- I sometimes wonder why I bother tweaking the colors so precisely on some shots. The reality is that 99% of viewers will see this on screens that are not calibrated. Even those that are will be in some state of losing their calibration (a warning to users, like myself, of the higher gamut monitors Dell has been shipping the last couple years: those things need to be adjusted every month). So while the skin tones should be a warm yellow w/ very little red and the background is a soft green leaning toward blue, I can’t say what y’all are seeing. This is one of the reason I spend most of my time on composition (arranging the initial shot, cropping, control of light/dark tones to emphasize subject, etc) and treat color as secondary. If the composition is solid, not only does it open up a wide range of processing styles, it also allows for variations due to viewing media.
Original:
March 15 2009 05:36 pm | Photography