"Solid Confidence"

"Solid Confidence"
©David A. Ziser

This was an image I captured at the Phoenix Ballroom in Cincinnati, Ohio.  I wanted to do something different with the groom.  He had a different kind of look than what I see typically most weekends.  I decided to create a bit more dramatic interpretation in my portrait of him.  Here was the challenge.  I liked the light being cast from the chandelier onto the back wall.  It provided nice backlighting for my portrait.  The challenge was to get light on him with spoiling the light on the back wall.  The secret to making that happen lies in the proper understanding of "Depth Of Light" which I discussed recently  at DPT [link].  I decided to use my trusty Z-Ray [link] to light the groom.  The Z-Ray emits a very narrow beam of light and if I used it close enough to him, not much light would reach that back wall.  That's exactly what I did.  My assistant used the Z-Ray to put the perfect loop light on the subject's face.  I positioned the subject opposite the stained glass window and chandelier for added compositional impact. I placed the camera on Tungsten color balance (which rendered the daylight backlit window very blue), adjusted for the correct exposure, and shot away.  A little further tweaking in Lightroom finished the presentation.  Camera specs: Canon 40D fitted with my 10-22mm lens at 10mm, F 5.6 @ 1/60 second, ISO 800.  Enjoy!  David