"The Last Rehearsal"

"The Last Rehearsal"
© David A. Ziser

Since this is a Bar/Bat Mitzvah centric post today, I thought I would feature anther image from Hannah’s “temple shoot” made the day before her Bat Mitzvah celebration.  Additional images are also featured in the following article.

This is an image which is the last in the series that I take of my young Bar/Bat Mitzvah’s. After roaming around and photographing various locations within the synagogue, I always end up at the back of the sanctuary.

I know it’s going to be a very wide angle shot many times incorporating my Sigma fisheye as I did for this image.  I really like how the wide angle lens modifies and accentuates the geometrics of this space.

I positioned my subject around “nodal point #1 – the bottom left corner of the frame, lit her from the right with my strobe through my Zumbrella at 1/4 power, and shot away. I really like how all the lines lead directly to the subject in this image. The balance of the strobe with the ambient is just about perfect making Miss Hannah really “pop” from the surrounds.

I used Lightroom 4 for most of the image modifications in this image, including the Lens correction feature which removed all signs of the fish eye lens – pretty cool isn’t it. I also used the “Content Aware Fill” in Photoshop CS 5.5 to remove an exit sign camera left.

When all is said and done, I think we have a very compelling portrait of our pretty young lady that I’m confident her parents will love!

Camera specs:  Canon 7 D fitted with Sigma 8mm fisheye, F5.6 @ 1/20 second, ISO 800.  Enjoy!  -David