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Portrait by the lake



This photo gets zero points for creativity: pretty model, flat black dress, flat light, gray sky, windy day, shallow depth of field. It did, however, turn out pretty well. 

The original looked like this:


This is not an accident. 

The underexposure of the foreground was mandated by the brightness of the clouds - if the model were exposed correctly, the background would be totally blown out beyond any ability to recover. Moving some sliders got me this:


Much better. 

I was trying for a fairly centered composition, but my model kept moving in the wind and I felt I had a bit too much dead space so I cropped it a bit.



Then I adjusted the curves so the shadows weren't so dark and the highlights had some definition. 



I have a bad habit of using too much contrast, so doing a fairly flat photo was good practice for me.









Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 14, 2020 at 5:21 PM

    even with the use of simple colors and background this picture pops and seems editorial to me

    ReplyDelete
  2. AbigailOctober 14, 2020 at 7:31 PM

    Love the contrast of your dress and the lightness of the background. Although I am one to use a ton of contrast myself.

    ReplyDelete

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