"Little Boy Blue"

"Little Boy Blue"
© David A. Ziser

This image was made during the wedding rehearsal of the wedding I was photographed in northern Michigan just a few weeks ago.  I just love roaming the grounds looking for great guest expressions that I can catch with my camera. The children are always favorite subjects for these candids. This little boy, the ring bearers for the wedding, had just arrived with his sisters and mom and dad.

He was a little shy and even when I pointed my camera in his direction, he really made no move at all to avoid camera. His simple, soft, gentle, innocent look back to the camera was exactly what I was looking for.

The lighting was perfect.  The light was coming in from through an open door camera right. The lighting ratio was perfect and the expression was natural.  I zoomed in for a very close cropped image of his face and fired away. In the very short amount of time that transpired get this photograph – only seconds – I believe I captured a timeless image of this very young boy, the ring bearer.

I tweaked the image slightly in Lightroom 4. I adjusted a few of the scene’s tonalities and added a slight vignette to focus the viewers attention even more to this young boy’s face. I also used the “adjustment brush” in LR4 to tone down some of the areas around his face to even more effectively focus on those beautiful facial features and big eyes.

A quick trip to Photoshop to finish up some facial retouching and some eye enhancement gave me the finished result. I think that when you consider the candid nature of this photograph and then view the finished result, it is very exciting and rewarding to pull off a striking image in a very short amount of time. To me that's part of the magic of this profession and it's one of the things I thoroughly enjoy accomplishing for my clients.

Camera specs: Canon 5D Mark III fitted with Tamron 28 – 300 mm lens at 184 mm, F6.3 @ 1/200 of a second, ISO 6400.  Enjoy!  – David