This photo may not have lots of visual or artistic interest but I can't take my eyes off it because it's just so right.
I often find with portraits that the photo just doesn't look like the subject. not completely. And in the 100s I've taken of John, none of them has matched my mental image of him as completely as this one does. I haven't read enough about photography to explain it in technical terms but I'm guessing it has something to with the combination of
- focal length (49.0mm, 35mm equivalent: 78 mm)
- depth of field
- ambient lighting (diffuse natural lighting late in the afternoon, 1/60 sec, f/5.6)
The only digital altering I did here is cropping and retouching a few teeny tiny blemishes.
2 comments:
Nice shot! One thing to try with portrait shots is to have a narrow depth-of-field. Those are the shots where your subject is in focus but everything else is blurred out. Your camera may have a portrait mode on the dial. If not, you can do it manually by shooting in aperature mode and setting the largest aperature (lowest f-stop) on your camera.
--Hoi
Yep, Hoi. That's pretty much what I do. Unfortunately, 5.6 is my largest aperture. My old film SLR had 4 and 2, which was sweet. I'm also quite envious of a friend's low-light lens, which is awesome for portraits.
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