"Harmonious Strings"

"Harmonious Strings"
© David A. Ziser

This is one of my favorite images from yesterday's session. Near the front of the church was as beautiful new grand piano. One of the class members opened the piano lid in order to use the piano as a prop for one of their photographs. I immediately saw the possibility for a very exciting wide-angle photograph.

I was shooting with my Canon 5D Mark II and knew that my Sigma  12–24 MM lens would be the lens of choice to pull off a dramatic photograph of my bride. The challenge of this photograph was to balance the light that I needed to put on her face for proper lamination against the bright light streaming through the stained-glass window in the background. I also needed to get enough light on the piano strings to really create the dramatic affect that I wanted.

I asked Chad, who was holding the shoot through Zumbrella for the class at the time, to move in the position and give me a loop lighting pattern on Laurel’s face. He nailed the lighting.

I made a couple of test exposures in order that I could balance the stained-glass window in the background with the illumination I had on my subject. I framed up the bride with the long lines of the piano strings leading right to her. Nothing works better than a super-wide angle lens to get the desired effect in this kind of a situation.  I love how the image developed.

Another challenge in this kind of the situation is to avoid major lens distortion of your subject when photographing her with such a super wide angle lens. The secret to avoiding wide-angle distortion is to keep the subject near the center of the frame as I did in this photograph here. The lighting, strong composition, and the wonderful setting all came together to create this dramatic portrait of our lovely bride.

Camera specs: Canon 5D Mark II fitted with 12-24mm lens at 12mm, F5.6 @ 1/30 second, ISO 800.  Enjoy!  -David