Fender Bender

Matt G. Harris has added a photo to the pool:

f/7.1 | ISO 100 | 1/200 second | 18mm | 180 ppi | 21.60in x 14.4in | Non-traditional Digital Photography

This weeks assignment was either low-key or high-key photography. I chose to give high-key a shot since I had access to the schools studio.

For set up, I had two guys hold up a white piece of paper strip behind Andrew. I then set up a flash directly behind the paper in order to make the white in the background overexposed. I then had a bright light shinning almost directly below facing up of Andrew's face. Then above and behind me, there was another flash pointing straight on at Andrew.

Initially, I wanted to get a serious shot because I thought that would work best for high-key photography...as I predicted, Andrew was the worst model for a serious face :)! So I started taking shots of him with his natural tendency...smiling! This shot was by far the best expression I got most due to his eyes being the most open and his genuine smile. I like the rule of thirds in this photo to top it all off.

One of the main things I was trying to do to get this photograph was zoom out to 18mm in order to get a somewhat wide-angle look. I think this really helps the photo because it gives it more depth (or something like that haha).

Editing was crazy for this. It's way too hard to explain but as an overall, I removed blemishes, curves, levels, sharpening, etc. Then after all that, I followed an online video tutorial (www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYsbh3Jsfag&feature=related) to make it a high key portrait. This was very time consuming and included somewhere around 6 layers and 21 steps. In the end, I am more than happy with the result. I think this is one of my best works up to date and I usually don't like portrait photography at all - I'm surprised that my best work would be coming from an area of photography that I am not too fond of. I converted to black and white and I believe that really helps the picture. The only area that kind of upsets me is that part of his head is cut off. This was simply due to me trying to get a genuine smile out of Andrew and looking for that rather than the overall framing. I'm debating cropping down more to make it look more deliberate.

Tell me what you think of it!!