Saturday, October 06, 2012

"Beauty Among The Ruins"

Beauty Among The Ruins - 0231- Italy12-DAZ_8742

"Beauty Among The Ruins"
©David A. Ziser

These surrounds aren’t really ruins but the olive press room at the castle. And, I have to say, about the darkest space I’ve ever photographed – just check out the camera specs below.  Nevertheless, I thought this space would be perfect for the portrait of Orchi that I had in mind. 

Look at all the repeat circular elements we have in this scene – the two pressing stones, the arch in the architecture, the pulleys, and even the curve of the chair back. I thought these repeating elements did a great job in framing our subject.  With her positioned near “nodal point #2” we strike a nice visual balance with our subject and all the other visual elements in the scene.

I further wanted to draw viewer attention to our subject with the dramatic use of lighting I chose for this photograph.  Since the light was so low in this space I used a small 5 LED flashlight.  It was the small cone of light from the flashlight that gives this image a “Hollywood/George Hurrell” look to it which I think is quite striking in the context of the overall composition.

The last adjustment to the image was to make it a straight black and white image.  As a B&W image, all distractions of color are dismissed from the scene leaving us a simple, classic, dramatic portrait of this beautiful young lady in this very eclectic location.

Camera specs:  Canon 5D Mark III fitted with 24-105MM IS lens at 28mm, F4.5 @ 1/40 second, ISO 12,800.  Enjoy!  David

3 comments:

  1. Love it David. No z light available so use a led flash light. Beautiful repeating elements and image cropping-setup.

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  2. David you once asked why such a low comment response? I just notice yesterday that your site has a nofollow setup. If you are using Word Press there is a dofollow plugin (free) that will bring in 1000's of links to you. I just put it on my blog and would love if you did the same.
    thanks
    Kirk Masters

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  3. I would love to know where the rim lighting on her right arm came from... Very nice image!

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