Monday, May 30, 2011

Graduation Day

A couple of weeks ago our daughter graduated with a degree in biology. My parents drove in from Colorado and stayed in town for a few days to attend her graduation. But on that day my dad was unable to go. So I settled for having Rachel don her cap and gown once more and had her stand with my dad in our front yard.

The light from the setting sun was wonderful. I put the sun at my 2 o'clock position and added a bit of fill flash (set at -0.7) to lighten the shadows a bit. I used the 50mm lens and was standing on a planter in order to get a little height. In all I took 12 shots. I was happiest with this one:

Rachel and my Dad

Then I imported it into Lightroom, increased the "clarity" and "vibrance" settings to add a bit of punch, and then added a vignette to focus your attention on them.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 on aperture-priority mode using the 50mm f/1.8 lens; SB-800 flash; 1/200 sec at f/2.8; ISO 200; flash white balance; fine JPG.)

4 comments:

  1. I love how happy and vibrant they both look! I can see why you like that one.

    Do you know of any good places that you'd recommend for getting prints made of photographs? I figured you'd be a good person to ask.

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  2. the two print labs i use through smugmug are ez prints in georgia, and bay photo in santa cruz, ca. i prefer bay photo as they ship all prints flat, whereas ez prints will roll prints in shipping tubes above a certain size. it's cheaper to ship in tubes versus flat, but then i don't have the hassle of unrolling a print and keeping it flat. bay photo is a bit more costly because they also color correct by hand. granted, they're more expensive than if you were to just go to walmart, costco, or sam's club, but i've been pleased with their prints.

    you might take a look at mpix, too.

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  3. Thank you! :) I had a feeling you'd know of some good ones. I know there's a vast variety of ways you can get things printed, but I don't know a lot about any of that process as it relates to digital photography.

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  4. you're welcome, carrie. you could, of course, also print photos yourself on your inkjet printer but i just find it really expensive for my taste, especially since we all share our photo printer to print all sorts of things other than photos.

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