"Dreaming Of You"

"Dreaming Of You"
©David A. Ziser

This is an image I captured during yesterdays’ on-location-photo-session while at Texas School.  We had just finished lunch and were making preparations to head to our next location.  One of the class members asked what I would do on a bright sunny day where the sun was still pretty high in the sky. 

Well, we were standing in the church parking lot, it was about 1:00 p.m. and the sun was blazing brightly. Hey, a perfect place to show my solution.  The bottom line is this: for soft, easy portraits you  need soft light – that wasn’t happening in this parking lot.

First I selected an area of the parking lot where I could use a small line of trees to supply my background.  But after wrapping the bride’s veil around her the background was not really an issue. 

The “soft light” solution was solved by pulling out my 84” Westcott parabolic translucent umbrella and interrupting the suns rays falling on my bride’s face.  That gave me the softness I needed. I oriented the bride’s beautiful face so that it would alight with the soft direction of light I had created with my giant umbrella.  I simply needed to sure to get light into her eyes and not “pocket” her eye sockets.

Next, I  switched on “Live View” on my camera so that I get a higher vantage point for my photograph.  The higher vantage point and tight telephoto lens did a lot to ameliorate the fact that my background was not perfect.

The sun was quite bright so I asked the bride to close her eyes and shot away.  When I looked at the image, I found I really liked the image with her eyes closed – that fact seemed to add a certain gentleness to the overall feel of the image.

To finish up the image, I used Lightroom 4 to add a bit more softness by sliding the Clarity slider just a few points to the left.  I think the result is quite a beautiful portrait. Who would has guessed it was created just a few feet from a very busy street with cars zooming by and in direct sunlight at 1:00p.m. in the afternoon?

Camera specs: Canon 5D Mark III fitted with Sigma 85mm F1.4 lens, F1.8 @ 1/4000 second, ISO 200.  Enjoy!  -David