Thursday, July 22, 2010

"Family Ties"

Family Ties

"Family Ties"
©David A. Ziser
This is a family portrait I made a few years ago.  Yes you guessed it, I was digging through the archives again. I actually have a different version of this family group displayed at my studio.  In doing the shoot, we were working into the evening, and although I had several nice images up to that point, the evening sun and clouds started working their beautiful magic on the sky.  My thought was to create a more dramatic family portrait with the very cool clouds in the background.  Using a wide angle lens should enhance the result.   I used my off camera flash directly firing at the subject - no Zumbrella because it would have cut my light output by two stops and I needed all the light I could get in order to darken the sky. Remember, when using your flash outdoors, the secret is to overpower the ambient, underexposing it by at least a stop for the dramatic cloud effect. I’m happy how the photograph evolved and it’s final result. But most importantly, so did the client. Camera specs: Nikon D1x fitted with 16-35mm lens at 34mm, F 5.0 @ 1/320 second,  ISO 400. Enjoy!  -David

5 comments:

  1. I really do like this portrait, just love the drama setting, and the light on the family is wonderful balance.

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  2. I really like this image, Mr. Ziser. Especially how the blue shirts and light colored slacks carries through the blue sky/white fence and clouds theme. Well done.

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  3. David,

    I'm not as enthusiastic about this portrait as others have been.

    I certainly agree that the slacks/fence and shirt/sky coordination works well, but the sky bothers me in this picture. Not only does it seem brooding, even threatening, but it seems to me to overwhelm the portrait by being more interesting than the family. My eye goes immediately to the light patch of sky between the mother and youngest son, then upwards from there to the clouds. It takes a while, relatively speaking, to get around to looking at the family, and still the sky - or the light slacks and fence – keeps pulling my eye away from them.

    It's a beautiful illustration of the point you were making, however. And my opinion is just my opinion.

    I don't know how you find the time to do all this, but I'm sure glad you do.

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  4. David, do you remember how far back the q-flash was and how much power?

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  5. I love the lighting and the mood, but not so sure of the clothing choice. Is this a family or a Best Buy location employee picture?

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