Belle's Face

I shot a pic today for use on my personal blog (www.zanehollingsworth.com) and since I haven't shot much of anything in the past week, I thought I'd entertain myself and do a little post about the photo here.

I was a Bad Pug Parent recently and needed a lead photo for the post. Belle was in a cooperative mood (meaning that she was nearly passed out asleep), so I started grabbing the gear. I wanted something that highlighted her face, and then let everything else kinda fall away. Plus I wanted to use one of my new toys, a Justin Clamp.

I mounted a SB800 onto the clamp and placed it on my computer desk, aiming it down at her little pug face. Next I started getting my settings together. Fast enough to make the room darkish and bring in some detail from out the window. Initially the window was blown out so I kept dialing up the speed and killing iso. I wanted a shallow depth of field, so I left my aperture at f/2.

Belle in her chair, hanging out. The SB800 is mounted to the clamp and then clamped to a chair. I then wheeled it in tight and dialed the power down by 1.7 stops. 

This is one of the times when I like to use TTL. I wanted a faster sync speed (I ended up at 1/500, f/2, ISO 200 for the image) so I took advantage of the TTL FP sync thingy. I didn't like where I had the light initially, so I clamped it onto another chair and wheeled it in close.

I got a few shots of her looking at me, but the one I really liked was of her kinda looking away.

Belle's Face

If I'd had a predictable and patient model, I would have used a small softbox and tried to make the shadow from the seat less harsh. But I never know when Belle is gonna take off after a cat, so I wanted to get some shots as quickly as I could. As I feared, one shot after this, Kim came home and Belle was off to greet her. Glad I didn't try the softbox.

Easy edit. A little WB adjustment to warm things up just a bit. A little cropping, exposure, contrast, and saturation improvements in LR3. Quick, down and dirty. No PS at all on this one.