Town That Dreaded Sundown

ISO: 1000 Aperture: 11.0 Shutter Speed: 1sec Lens: 24-105mm Flash: 580

This was the first picture that we took out of the TTDS series for TOP this year. I bumped up the ISO to 1000 in order to get a little more grain in the picture. When taking this picture I tried to think of it in layers. We knew that we wanted to be able to see detail in the background, therefore, we made the aperture 11. We also wanted to limit the amount of ambient light from above Caroline. By changing the aperture, we were able to control how much of the light was illuminating her. For Josh in the background, we used a 580 flash behind him to give him a nice rim light. This also created the long shadows in front of his feet. We also used another 580 flash in the background to light up the area behind Josh. Originally we wanted to be able to use a fog machine behind Josh, but we didn't have enough energy available to power the fog machine. The fog machine would have been really helpful because we wouldn't have had to be as careful about hiding the lightstand behind Josh's leg. This made it difficult to get the desired lighting without being able to see the stand in the shot. We still had to do a little bit of photoshop work to get the stand out of the picture, but it wasn't too bad. In the end, to get this picture the way it is, we had to take a shot of Caroline from another picture and match it up with the background in this picture because she wasn't in sharp focus. This is because we had to drag the shutter speed in order to get the lighting in the background. We pretty much painted the background with light because we told Hailey who was in the background to flash it at a certain point. It took a while to get the timing on this correct, but it eventually worked. Overall, I feel like this picture wouldn't have been what it is without the planning and all of the help that went into it. I was lucky enough to push the button on the camera, but it wouldn't bee near what it is if it hadn't had been for the help of all the other photographers. The pictures for this portfolio in general is a great indication of those who are really team players and those who drop the ball.