"Queen Of The Ball"

"Queen Of The Ball"
©David A. Ziser

Here is another image I made during my early bird shoot while in Banff last week.  It’s a simple yet elegant portrait of our beautiful model who looks like she is about to attend the formal ball.  It almost has a “debutant” feel about it – elegant, classic, timeless.

I was struck by the six arches you see surrounding Jenna and thought with her centered in the composition all lines would lead to her.  I had to be careful not to get the camera too low for the image.  Had I lowered the camera a bit more, her head would not have been framed by the arch you see above her head. Even with a centered composition, I think I captured Jenna’s placement just right.

The biggest challenge  was getting the lighting on the subject.  Had I shot through my Zumbrella, the light would have flooded heavily onto the background on the left.  I needed a much more direct light source to avoid that happening.

I chose my handy, dandy Z-Ray which did the trick perfectly.  I was able to have one of the class attendees point the light directly at Jenna’s face and give me the beautiful loop lighting you see.  The very  narrow cone of light coming from my Z-Ray also creates a nice lighting vignette on the subject, as well.  It almost appears that she is in a spotlight – which, of course, she is.

So, even though the pose is simple and elegant, I still needed to work out the technical details to capture the image I wanted.

Camera specs: Canon 7D fitted with 18-200mm IS lens at 30mm, F 5.6 @ 1/100 second, ISO 800.  Enjoy!  -David