"Easy Beauty"

"Easy Beauty"
© David A. Ziser

I remember making this image.  The setting was simply gorgeous – it was a perfect Fall day. We had worked our way down a fairly steep slope, avoided several thorn bushes and landed in this pristinely beautiful location.

The heavy tree cover provided beautiful soft light throughout the scene making it easy for me to bring in my off-camera flash for that wonderful dimensional lighting on Becca’s face. Strobe was at 1/2 power camera right through my Zumbrella.

Compositionally I positioned her face in the top left quadrant of the scene and let the vanishing point just recede into the center of the image. I also took a high enough camera position so that she was mostly surrounded by the lighter tonalities within the scene.  I didn’t want her body to be half in light tones and the other half against darks tones.  I think the faming works very well.  Add to that beautiful lighting, a soft, easy expression and we have a great high school senior portrait. Both she and her mom loved it!

Camera specs:  Canon 40D fitted with 70-200mm IS lens at 130mm, F 5.6 @ 1/40 second (handheld), ISO 200.  Enjoy!  -David