”Star Of The Ballet”

”Star Of The Ballet”
©David A. Ziser

This image was created as one in a series of portraits I did a few years ago for the Cincinnati Arts.  I love photographing individuals in their natural surrounds. But, sometimes the “natural surrounds” are not desirable or what they could be.

That was the case in this image.  The lovely lady pictured in the image was a large supporter of the Cincinnati Ballet.  I was to make her portrait at the new Cincinnati Ballet offices.  What seemed like a good idea at the time turned out differently.  Because of the “newness” of the building, I was having difficulty finding a background that would work for my portrait.

I decided to switch to “plan B”. Most of the walls were a nice bright white so I quickly decided to photograph my subject against the white wall.  The ambient light was sufficiently bright to render the walls bright white.

I brought my off-camera strobe in from camera right to give me the nice separation and sense of dimension to my subject. The ratio of the flash to the ambient gave me a perfect contrast ratio.

Now for my background – I found a very previously advertised Ballet poster from years past and took a quick photograph of it.  You know where this is heading – right?  You guessed it.  I cleaned up the poster in Photoshop, extracted my subject from the white background, and recombined everything onto a pain white canvass in Photoshop.

I loved it, the client loved it, and it looked great in the arts magazine – not a bad save for a less than perfect shooting situation ;~)

Canon 5D fitted with 24-105mm IS lens at 73mm, F5.6 @ 1/200 second, ISO 320.  Enjoy!  -David