The learning never ends. I'm never satisfied with my photos and upon looking back at past work, I always seem to focus on what needs to be improved. That often gives me and excuse to go shopping. I ended up picking up more lights and have been reading up on how to produce more "commercial-like" looks.
Photo processing and vintage looks have their place, but in this shoot with Leah, I really wanted to keep the colors accurate and vibrant and keep the sky and background detail from being lost. To do that, I would have to properly expose both the background and subject.For these shots, I used an Apollo Wescott 28" softbox mounted on an Alien Bee B800 (camera left) with as fill for a 3pm sun (camera right, top corner) at +3 and a round silver reflector camera right.
I also wanted to keep the short depth of field that my viewers are familiar with. I rented a Sing-Ray variable neutral density filter from the folks at Hawaii Photo Rental, to limit light so I could still shoot wide open at f1.4 at 35mm, which I used in the shot above at about -4. I quickly removed it after seeing how soft it made the shot.
I stopped down to f9 in the next shot (as well as the first shot above). The background isn't as blurred out as I'd like, which gives me an excuse to go shop for a different ND filter. I probably add my circular polarizer in the mix next time for bluer skies. Overall, I'm quite happy with the results!
